The tale of explorers Peary, Shackleton, and the Duke of the Abruzzi (K2), who tried for fame, fortune and glory to claim they were the first to go the furthest at the North Pole, the South Pole, and K2, respectively. Although none of them got credit for being the first, they were the pioneers who "almost" made it and their experiences enabled others to proceed with the discoveries. I can highly recommend this book; it read like a novel although it was non-fiction. 352 pages ( )

This was a well-written, thoroughly researched book about polar exploration. The author focused on the successful trips to the north and south poles, as well as the “third pole” of the highest mountain, in 1909. I felt that the third pole story didn’t fit well with the other two and seemed added in to emphasize public fascination with these explorers and the extremes that they went to. Overall, this was a fascinating book. ( )

I added this to my to-read stack based on this review in the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-the-edges-of-the-earth-review-going-to-extremes-...

Then I received a free copy, so I dove in for some armchair adventures. Three attempts to reach unexplored, far reaches of planet Earth: The North Pole, South Pole and top of he world at K2.

We see Peary, Shackleton and Abruzzi in audacious attempts to find these far distant points during 1909. There is none of the technology for location, mapping, clothing or food that could make these attempts easier today. Although to be clear, all of these are incredibly hard to accomplish today and still have limited chances of success with modern technology.

There is a reason these points were terra nova; they are incredibly hostile environments to humans, surrounded by vast regions that are just as hostile. ( )

One hundred years ago the world was reeling from WWI. Every value and belief once the foundation of civilization was called into question by the war.

But before the 'War to End All Wars' didn't end war, men were going on quests to conquer the unknown regions of ice. They faced gruesome suffering--loss of body parts that had frozen, physical exertion in extreme conditions, starvation, threats of crevasses that appeared out of nowhere and thin ice over frigid water.

For what? For glory.

The polar regions offered no gold or marketable flora or fauna, no open land for civilization to claim, no sunny beaches for tourism.

The men who raced to the poles or up the tallest mountains did it for fame and pride and for God and Country. They had something to prove and overwhelming ambition.

To The Edges of the Earth 1909, The Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration recounts the explorers of 1909: Peary's expedition to reach the North Pole, Shackleton's expedition to reach the South Magnetic Pole, and the Duke of Abruzzo's reach for the 'Third Pole' in the Himalayas-- the dangerous K2.

I have loved exciting, thrilling, and horrifying adventure narratives since girlhood. One of my first heroes was Robert Falcon Scott after I read The Great White South about his failed expedition to the South Pole. I have also read books about mountain climbing and K2. I haven't a thread of adventure myself, preferring a comfy chair and a cup of tea while reading about someone else risking their life.

Edward J. Larson's account strips away myths about these men. Peary especially, who may have falsely claimed to have reached the North Pole and whose treatment of Inuit, including his teenage concubine, was by our standards appalling and predatory. And the poor Inuit dogs that Peary 'borrowed,' worked to death, then fed to the other dogs (or his men, as needed.)

Shackleton was better, but there was grumbling over his leadership skills, and he did decide to take ponies to the South Pole as well as an early gasoline engine car, both quite useless.

The rich, handsome Italian Duke seems to come off the best, with few negative stories about him, and his later siding with the Allied forces during WWII.

The explorers needed to raise money to fund the trips. Money was given by rich Gilded Age barons and in exchange, they could have landmarks named after them. Their stories were sold to newspapers and magazines and printed in books. They went on the Lyceum lecture circuit with magic lantern photographs.

Peary brought back Inuit for scientific study; when they died their bones were put on display! And he stole three, huge meteorites which the natives used for iron making.

Oh, the frozen toes! The shards of frozen snow that sliced through good English Gabardine! The suffering described is horrifying. (And to think, I don't read horror stories, or at least that is what I had thought. Turns out--I do!)

Shackleton failed to reach the pole, but he was knighted anyway. Scott was already planning his expedition to the South Pole, as was Admunson, and in 1911 Scott perished while Amundsen reached the pole. Shackleton was old news but still returned in 1914-16 on the Endurance. By then WWI had consumed the world and no one had interest in men fooling around in icy realms. Shackleton died of a heart attack on his way to try one more time to reach the pole.

No one really knows if it was Cook or Peary, or Peary's companion Henson, who reached the North Pole. Or if either reached it. With no solid land, the ice over open water offered huge challenges. There were ongoing battles over their claims and bad feelings which sullied Peary's reputation.

"The time was when the search for the North Pole stood for the very acme of uncommercialized heroism," wrote Dean Shailer Mathews of the University of Chicago divinity school. Those were the days, indeed. Today, the opening of the Arctic waters brings dreams of drilling for oil and dollar signs.

The 19th c saw the rise of the romanticizing of the Arctic-- the barren, uncharted expanses of ice captivating the imagination. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein retreats to the North Pole, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins wrote the play The Frozen Deep, Frederick Church painted icebergs and Albert Bierstadt glaciers.

Could anyone then have imagined the aqua lung enabling men to view the ocean's bottom or an Endeavor that went into space? Or that the Arctic glaciers would be melting, the Arctic Ocean open and iceless?

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. ( )

To the Edges of the Earth: 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration by Edward J. Larson is an examination of the most adventurous year of all time.

1909 can be said to be the climactic year in the modern age of adventure-based exploration. The three poles to be conquered in 1909 were the North Pole, the South Pole, and the so-called Pole of Altitude in the Himalayas. (The South pole was sometimes divided into the geographic south and magnetic south poles.) The expeditions would face extraordinary difficulties, extremely harsh conditions, tremendous hardship, and death to claim the fame of being the first to plant their flags on these poles.

At the end of the year the explorers were celebrities. Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson were hailed as the discovers of the North Pole. Britain’s Ernest Shackleton set a new geographic "Furthest South" record. Shackleton's teammate, Australian Douglas Mawson, reached the Magnetic South Pole. "Italy’s Duke of the Abruzzi set an altitude record that would stand for a generation during his mountaineering expedition to the Himalaya's eastern Karakoram. The Duke attempted K2 and established the standard route up the most notorious mountain on the planet.

Larson points out in the preface: "This book especially benefited from my participation in the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, which allowed me to go where the Antarctic explorers went, camp where they camped, and climb where they climbed. Always traveling with others, and frequently in the company of experts, through this program I saw much of what Shackleton, Mawson, and the other early visitors to the Ross Sea region saw, from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and Ross Ice Shelf to the South Pole and summit of Mount Erebus. Extended stays at Shackleton’s Cape Royds and near Scott’s Hut Point and Cape Evans, where the explorers’ primitive winter quarters remain intact down to their unused crates of hardtack biscuits and long-frozen meat in the larder, gave insight into how the parties lived beyond what I could hope to glean from archival research."

The finished book contains notes, an index, photos, and maps. While I thought Larson did an admirable job following the three expeditions over the course of the book, my reading experience would have been greatly enhanced by the inclusion of photos and maps, which those who get the pleasure of reading the published editions will no doubt appreciate immensely.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2018/03/to-edges-of-earth.html ( )