I received this ebook through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. This is the account of the MOSAIC expedition. The MOSAIC expedition studied arctic ice for a full year cycle. This involved many teams of researchers and support from many nations. Markus Rex tells the story of the year in diary style interspersed with sidebar information. Rex helps run this expedition and is responsible for the safety of everyone involved. This makes the diary a bit more about running the expedition and a bit less about the science. The amount of data they gathered also needed much more analysis after the expedition ended. The entries detailing the challenges of running this expedition held my attention. The never ending challenges of moving and thawing ice were interesting. The polar bears needed to be constantly monitored and kept away from equipment and researchers. In the middle of all this, the pandemic came to a head. Trying to get supplies and moor ships at closed docks nearly stalled the whole project. The translation of this book was never an issue and was well done. Recommended for those with a love of science. ( )

Have you ever wondered how scientists come up with the data on climate change? Then this book is for you!
This book describes the year long MOSAIC expedition, launched by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. The institute sent the Polarstern maritime research ship into the Arctic Ocean to be frozen in for a whole year, following in the footsteps of Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who did the same in a wooden ship in 1897. The Polarstern is a modern icebreaker ship and built for sailing in the polar regions.
The measurements taken included sea ice thickness, water temperatures, air temperatures, (using a tethered weather balloon), and much more. The ship zigzag route covered over two thousand miles.
Expedition members came from thirty-seven countries. There were eighty partner institutions and scientific institutes from twenty different countries.
The translation was excellent. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the process of climate change. I read it in 3 days. There are black and white pictures in my advanced reader copy. The published copy will have color pictures and an index.
Thanks to Greystone Books for sending me this book through LibraryThing.
I rate it 4.5 stars rounded down. ( )

I received a free ARC of this book through the LTER in exchange for my honest opinion.
I was in Germany during the time the "Polarstern" set out for this amazing adventure in 2019. It was covered by the German media in depth and I was therefore very interested to read a firsthand account of the whole expedition.
The writing of the author was very dry (I guess he is a scientist, after all!) but still informative. I have also seen the TV documentary that was filmed during this trip, which was more exciting. I hope that the finished copy of the book has color pictures, I am sure that will greatly improve the appeal to readers. ( )

This is Markus Rex's account of the MOSAiC expedition, in which an international team of researchers on board the icebreaker RV Polarstern spent a year in the Arctic ice, studying the arctic climate from September 2019 to September 2020. The book is written more or less in the style of journal, capturing the expedition's progress from day to day and week to week, with periodic digressions on the background of the expedition, and of the expeditions that preceded it, starting with Fridtjof Nansen's 1897 polar expedition in 1897. The book paints a vivid picture of the challenging logistics of mounting an expedition of such scale, from the advanced scientific equipment used, to the amounts of food and water required on board the ship, to the strict procedures for guarding against the constant polar bear threat. The COVID-19 pandemic which began after the expedition was in progress, created further challenges for resupply ships and relief crews. The book concludes with a short, thoughtful epilogue in which Rex, having returned from the expedition and seen the effects of climate change on the front lines, describes both the urgent need and the challenges of implementing climate policies that are meaningful, effective, and fair. The Greatest Polar Expedition of All Time was originally written in German. I found this English translation by Sarah Pybus extremely smooth and easy to read, with no noticeable irregularities. This book strongly appealed to my interests in natural science, engineering, and adventure/exploration, and I would recommend it to anyone who shares those interests.

I liked the CONCEPT of this book far more than its actual execution.

The concept is intriguing: a group of scientists from various disciplines set out on a polar expedition board a ship that is purposely locked into the Arctic ice for a year in order to study climate change. The face obstacles due to weather, the harsh conditions, polar bears, equipment problems, etc., and everyone comes out alive at the end and with a wealth of data that couldn't have been collected any other way. That's a great concept for a book.

What we got though was very much less than that. It's a bloodless tale of almost literally nameless technocrats dealing with process-related issues rather than actually doing anything we can read about and grasp. There are almost no *people* in this story; almost no one is named. We don't get to know any of them. NO one has a personality or quirks, or causes or experiences any problems. We aren't even told exactly what the experiments they're running are, or what the point of any of it is until the final chapter, where we get a very terse description that doesn't illuminate much. Oh and halfway through the expedition, the author--the expedition's nominal leader--takes a vacation home so that he can spend time with his family for the holidays, then returns to the ship a couple months later. What the heck?

Disappointing. This one was a real missed opportunity because it's written almost in such a way as to briefly detail the expedition while purposely cutting out all the interesting parts. Dry and uninteresting. ( )