Pilgrims on the Ice
Pilgrims on the Ice

Author:

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2008-05-01

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780803216396

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Robert Falcon Scott?s 1901?4 expedition to the Antarctic was a landmark event in the history of Antarctic exploration, creating a sensation comparable to the Arctic efforts of the American Robert E. Peary. Scott?s initial expedition was also the first step toward the dramatic race to the South Pole in 1912, which resulted in the tragic deaths of Scott and his companions. Since then Scott?s reputation has vacillated between two extremes: Was he a martyred hero, the beau ideal of a brave and selfless explorer, or a bumbling fool whose mistakes killed him and his entire party?øPilgrims on the Ice goes beyond the personality of Scott to remove the first expedition from the shadow of the second, to study objectively its purpose, its composition, and its real accomplishments. This Bison Books edition includes a new preface by the author.

The Earthquake Observers
The Earthquake Observers

Author: Deborah R. Coen

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2012-12-10

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0226111830

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Earthquakes have taught us much about our planet’s hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This knowledge rests not only on the recordings of seismographs but also on the observations of eyewitnesses to destruction. During the nineteenth century, a scientific description of an earthquake was built of stories—stories from as many people in as many situations as possible. Sometimes their stories told of fear and devastation, sometimes of wonder and excitement. In The Earthquake Observers, Deborah R. Coen acquaints readers not only with the century’s most eloquent seismic commentators, including Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Karl Kraus, Ernst Mach, John Muir, and William James, but also with countless other citizen-observers, many of whom were women. Coen explains how observing networks transformed an instant of panic and confusion into a field for scientific research, turning earthquakes into natural experiments at the nexus of the physical and human sciences. Seismology abandoned this project of citizen science with the introduction of the Richter Scale in the 1930s, only to revive it in the twenty-first century in the face of new hazards and uncertainties. The Earthquake Observers tells the history of this interrupted dialogue between scientists and citizens about living with environmental risk.

Before the Heroes Came
Before the Heroes Came

Author: T. H. Baughman

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 1999-09-01

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9780803261631

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Although the Antarctic ice pack and some offshore islands had been sighted and even landed upon briefly as early as the 1820s, it was not until an eccentric Anglo-Norwegian explorer, Carsten F. Borchgrevink, went ashore in 1895 that a human being set foot on the Antarctic continent. Borchgrevink, snubbed by the British establishment, had stolen a march on several planned competing expeditions from Germany and Scandinavia. ø Borchgrevink returned to Antarctica in 1899 with a party that was the first to winter over on the continent. Regrettably, bad weather and unscalable mountains limited their forays inland. Borchgrevink's survival was proof that with adequate supplies, the Antarctic winter was survivable, and that with a better geographic position, the enormous unknown of the continent could be investigated. ø Borchgrevink galvanized the British geographical authorities who had come to consider polar exploration their exclusive province. Led by Sir Clements Markham of the Royal Geographic Society, the British keenly felt his blow to their national pride delivered by an explorer they regarded as an arrogant upstart. The RGS pushed forward with its plans, and a tragic competition to be the first to reach the South Pole was set in motion between the British and the Scandinavians. ø This work is anøaccount of the first tentative human gropings in Antarctica, concentrating on the coalescing of official and popular attitudes that later resulted in the polar races of Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen, which dominate the story of the "Heroic Era" of Antarctic exploration, from 1901 to 1922.