Anthony BrandtRezensionen

Pointless but inexplicably fun to read. Clearly, the authors had just as much fun writing it. Repeats the tired old revisionist myth about Ada Lovelace and makes reaching claims about art but all is forgiven, its just too positive to be angry about it.

I've been missing my nonfiction kicks. I thought this one sounded fantastic, so I picked it up to revel in all the grand things that creativity does (and why we need to foster it, dammit).

Of course, books like this are pretty much preaching to the choir. The people who read them are usually very aware of the uses and needs and the universality of the IDEA of creativity.

No matter who you are, where you come from, you're just as likely to be creative or not creative, as is your natural proclivity. No amount of money or lifestyle can change it, but conversely, all creative works, whether scientific, by expression, or composition, necessarily draws from the ideas and forms that came before it. In other words, no art is created in a vacuum and the creation of true creativity can't be forced.

This book is perfect for those self-selected readers because it doesn't skimp on the myriad examples of how all kinds of creativity informs each kind. Music and math have long been tied tightly together, but so is innovation to science fiction, math to graphics, and hundreds of other interconnections that lead from disparate sources like paleontology to windshields to instruction manuals aboard the Apollo to any number of meme-revolutions to the technological breakthroughs we have today, each one building on the next.

From a personal standpoint, I point to the explosion of novelists out there now. They're all building on each other and revolutionizing the direction of storytelling faster and faster, diving into stagnation and even faster revolutions until we get some truly astounding works.

Each is Bending, Breaking, Bending, and Blending the things that came before.

As a nonfiction work on what creativity is and why it should be encouraged, it delves mostly into the sociological slant but it also doesn't stint on the personal reasons. As in, why each and every one of us needs to keep our minds supple, and why the counter-arguments are bogus since we do all of the three B's anyway. :) The argument is to expand it across all areas so that the ideas can continue to cross-pollinate. :)

Do I agree with this sentiment?

HELL YES. Did I self-select myself to read this book? Hell Yes. Am I biased as all hell? Hell yes.

Is it wrong? No. I think all the ideas expressed make perfect sense. Even objectively. :) So there.

This was a really, really good read, and not even "for a pop history."

This is a fun read, an entertaining pop exposition of human creativity with lots of interesting supporting anecdotes and illustrations. The authors categorizes creativity into three clusters: bending, breaking, and blending. Contrary to popular belief, creativity is not only accessible to the genius mind, but can be achieved by almost anyone, and can be taught as well, unlike approaches used in most school curricula, which resort to rote. One takeaway, children who were praised for efforts on tests, versus just being praised for results, were willing to take on greater challenges, as opposed to risking their reputations by further testing.

Franklin was a terrible explorer.

Anthony Brandt tells a surprisingly interesting story of the British search for the Northwest Passage - a long-sought route to the Far East by going around the Americas to the north. While he briefly covers early efforts, the core of the book focuses on the first half of the 1800s and men like John Ross, William Edward Parry, James Clark Ross (nephew to the elder Ross), and John Franklin - the man who literally ate his boots to avoid starvation.

"Risk is the essence of exploration" (pg 140), but the search turned out to be a fools errand. Yes, there is a Northwest Passage (several, in fact), but it's frozen and impassable nearly year round and includes some of the most inhospitable places on earth. Ships became trapped in the ice that sometimes towered over them and men died of starvation, scurvy and exposure to subzero temperatures (as much as 70 below). And yet the British saw this exploration as their duty and a matter of national pride, and persisted. It's unfortunate they didn't have enough humility to adopt some of the practices of the local Inuit tribes, who successfully live in such harsh conditions.

Brandt makes this period of history come alive with vivid descriptions of the elements, the explorers and the expeditions. He places the motivations in perspective, and makes it all more interesting than I had anticipated. The book is detailed and might be more information than some readers will want (nearly 400 fairly dense pages in my advance copy), and suffers from repetition sometimes but is highly readable. It started kind of slowly for me but really picked up, and I finished the last 60-70 pages at a run. I really enjoyed reading it. (Those who enjoyed Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing, and Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 by Nathaniel Philbrick will enjoy this book as well).

Anthony Brandt tells a surprisingly interesting story of the British search for the Northwest Passage - a long-sought route to the Far East by going around the Americas to the north. While he briefly covers early efforts, the core of the book focuses on the first half of the 1800s and men like John Ross, William Edward Parry, James Clark Ross (nephew to the elder Ross), and John Franklin - the man who literally ate his boots to avoid starvation.

"Risk is the essence of exploration" (pg 140), but the search turned out to be a fools errand. Yes, there is a Northwest Passage (several, in fact), but it's frozen and impassable nearly year round and includes some of the most inhospitable places on earth. Ships became trapped in the ice that sometimes towered over them and men died of starvation, scurvy and exposure to subzero temperatures (as much as 70 below). And yet the British saw this exploration as their duty and a matter of national pride, and persisted. It's unfortunate they didn't have enough humility to adopt some of the practices of the local Inuit tribes, who successfully live in such harsh conditions.

Brandt makes this period of history come alive with vivid descriptions of the elements, the explorers and the expeditions. He places the motivations in perspective, and makes it all more interesting than I had anticipated. The book is detailed and might be more information than some readers will want (nearly 400 fairly dense pages in my advance copy), and suffers from repetition sometimes but is highly readable. It started kind of slowly for me but really picked up, and I finished the last 60-70 pages at a run. I really enjoyed reading it. (Those who enjoyed Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing, and Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 by Nathaniel Philbrick will enjoy this book as well).

Anthony Brandt tells a surprisingly interesting story of the British search for the Northwest Passage - a long-sought route to the Far East by going around the Americas to the north. While he briefly covers early efforts, the core of the book focuses on the first half of the 1800s and men like John Ross, William Edward Parry, James Clark Ross (nephew to the elder Ross), and John Franklin - the man who literally ate his boots to avoid starvation.

"Risk is the essence of exploration" (pg 140), but the search turned out to be a fools errand. Yes, there is a Northwest Passage (several, in fact), but it's frozen and impassable nearly year round and includes some of the most inhospitable places on earth. Ships became trapped in the ice that sometimes towered over them and men died of starvation, scurvy and exposure to subzero temperatures (as much as 70 below). And yet the British saw this exploration as their duty and a matter of national pride, and persisted. It's unfortunate they didn't have enough humility to adopt some of the practices of the local Inuit tribes, who successfully live in such harsh conditions.

Brandt makes this period of history come alive with vivid descriptions of the elements, the explorers and the expeditions. He places the motivations in perspective, and makes it all more interesting than I had anticipated. The book is detailed and might be more information than some readers will want (nearly 400 fairly dense pages in my advance copy), and suffers from repetition sometimes but is highly readable. It started kind of slowly for me but really picked up, and I finished the last 60-70 pages at a run. I really enjoyed reading it. (Those who enjoyed Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing, and Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 by Nathaniel Philbrick will enjoy this book as well).

England spent a lot of time searching for a Northwest Passage for their ships. Brandt covers the gamut of efforts to find it, many of which ended tragically, and some which, miraculously enough, ended with everyone back home in England, although without having found the passage. One of the early attempts that was so incredible as to sound fictional was the 17th-century voyage of Thomas James. He had to winter in the Arctic, and to avoid having his ship crushed by ice or swept away, he and his crew deliberately sunk the ship, then pulled it back up in the spring, repaired it, and sailed it home. Now that's chutzpah.

All the explorers were audacious, but some were poorly equipped to handle the rigors of Arctic exploration. The insistence on doing things the European way instead of learning from the Inuit often resulted in unnecessary deaths. Stubbornness and ethnocentrism blinded the explorers to the fact that the Inuit built igloos and wore furs not because they didn't know any better, but because these were actually great tools for survival. Stubbornness was also a big part of the reason there were so many missions to Canada in the first place. When captains and their crews keep disappearing, dying, or barely limping back home without results, it seems that sane people might start to wonder if finding the passage is even worth it; obviously, it's not going to be easy going even when and if it's found. But the English chose to hang their pride on the project, so sanity didn't enter into the equation.

Many expeditions are discussed in the book, so it can sometimes be hard to keep track of the various names and the timeline. It would also probably be beneficial to familiarize yourself with a map of the area, as there are a lot of bays, straits and inlets described. The book seems like a pretty good overview of the whole endeavor, and it's made me want to read up some more on a couple of the expeditions, particularly John Franklin's, which is talked about at length and has apparently been an inspiration for a number of fictional versions of events.½

To be fair, Anthony Brandt's "The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage" isn't really a bad book. However, I found it very dull.

I am absolutely mad for polar exploration stories and was surprised that I didn't really enjoy this book at all. Mainly, I think, this book really focused more on administrative details instead of the actual adventuring aspect, which is what I enjoy.

This book is really comprehensive and I found myself wading through lots of detail that wasn't interesting to me. After a week and a half to get halfway through the book (and not even to Franklin's ill-fated final expedition) I gave up.

I know quite a lot about polar death, so it's remarkable that this book kept me relatively riveted despite treading familiar ground. It gives some fascinating insights into British imperialism while managing to tie itself to present day issues of global warming--always nice to read a history book that explicitly states its relevance. (I am being slightly facetious with this last comment but I do mean it: I am not a historian, just an interested freelancer, and I appreciate mightily when history is made relevant without bombarding me with a constantly restated thesis. Brandt struck a really nice balance, making a lot of larger connections that illuminated my own [very literature-centric:] experience with the British Empire while expanding my existing knowledge of polar death. Frankenstein is suddenly a lot more interesting when placed in its proper historical context and for that alone I am indebted to Brandt.)

A very readable history of the 19th century British attempts to discover a NorthWest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific over the northern coast of Canada, through the Arctic ice. The focus of the story is John Franklin who searched for the Passage several times and was lionised by the British public as an intrepid explorer. His failure to return from his last expedition generated a stream of rescue missions both privately and publicly funded through the rest of the century. Brandt is excellent at the geography and the history of exploration. His descriptions of the cold and the privations of the exploring teams adds enormously to our understanding of the implications of such expeditions and to the tensions arising from the rescue missions. His knowledge of 19th century British cultural customs is a little shakier, but does not detract from an overall exciting if ultimately tragic boy's own story.

Anthony Brandt's "North Pole: A Narrative History" is a nice anthology featuring excerpts from many of the major expeditions to the Arctic from the actual explorers who searched for the fabled Northwest Passage, for each other and for the North Pole. The passages written by the explorers themselves are nicely linked together by Brandt's narrative, making this very readable.

So much of the book depends on the journals, letters and books of the explorers themselves that the quality of the writing varies. Some stories are incredibly interesting (particularly John Richardson's story, which is one I hadn't read before) while others are more difficult to read through.

Overall, the book is an interesting collection of North Pole stories.

Writing about the fate of John Franklin is always difficult. The man failed. Simple as that. But much of it was not his fault. Could a better man have done better? We cannot know.

On the whole, this is a kind biography of a man who had many genuine abilities and equally many weaknesses -- a man who was genuinely kind, genuinely open to new ideas... and genuinely easy to push around. Franklin led one successful and two unsuccessful trips to the Arctic. His naval record was good. He was beloved in Tasmania, where he was governor -- but the civil service hated him.

And, as it turned out, he died before he could know the disaster that faced his final expedition.

This book tries hard to present the latest research and to see both sides. We do not know all we would like to know about Franklin's final expedition. But most of what we do know is here.

A fine history of the fabled, and nutzoid, 19th-century explorations of the Arctic. The author gets a little preachy about the diminishing ice of the polar region, though his point is certainly valid: In perhaps not many years at all, a Northwest Passage won't be the least bit hard to navigate and the days of boats being entrapped for years on end will seem even more inconceivable. Anthony Brandt aptly sums up the hubris and folly of the British expeditions and tells well the fascinating story of how the region was mapped by the many many ships sent in search of the lost Franklin Expedition and its 129 noble but idiotic men. One major failing: This book desperately needs more and better maps!

Well-written and compelling book about the politics, enthusiasms, intellectual background too, and the human misery of the search for the Northwest passage. Rather hard on poor Sir John Franklin, perhaps not undeservedly so, and another long overdue attempt to rescue the immense reputation of John Rae from the dustbin of history. Recommended reading as a survey of the search for the Passage.