5 of 5 stars

An excellent collection of journal entries, poetry, blog posts and articles on Antarctica, from the first explorers up to the present scientists. These are their own words, with introductions and some commentary by the author Rebecca Priestley. The best pieces convey both the science and the emotions of the writers, illustrating the importance to me of rolling back a STEM-only trend in education and incorporating the humanities broadly, even in the hardest of hard sciences.

The book is broken up into four sections. The first is a collection of mostly log entries of the earliest explorers who sought out Antarctica, including British, French, Russian and American explorers. These were very enjoyable and I felt like I was right there with them. The second section is on the first explorers on Antarctica, which had many exciting, exhausting, depressing, and joyful moments. The third section covers science work from the late 1950s onward, with pieces that ranged from slightly boring to delightful commentary to shear awesomeness. The last section was on Antarctica as a “Global Barometer”, studying the climate and geology to find insight into climate change and what we might expect on our planet. There is hope in this last section for what the world might do to slow and reverse climate change. Sadly, with the rise of rightwing denialism and anti-science, that hope isn’t as bright today as it was when this was published in 2016.

As I said, I really enjoyed all the entries in the first section. In the second, I loved Frederick Cook’s piece on sleeping “beneath the aurora australis”; Erich von Drygalski’s “balloon ascent”; Johan Gunnar Andersson’s “Penguin eggs and fried seal”; Edgeworth David’s “Hunting the south magnetic pole”; Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s harrowing and depressing “Worst journey in the world”; George Murray Levick’s “The hooligan cocks of Cape Adare” (unpublished for decades due to its perceived naughty nature); and Robert Falcon Scott’s tragic and powerful “Geologising on the Beardmore.”

In the third part, Colin Bull’s “Innocents in the Dry Valleys” was delightful, Lloyd Spencer Davis’s “The accidental penguin biologist” was excellent; John Long’s “An average day in the field” was cool; Michael S. Becker’s “Antarctic time capsule” was great and Katie Mulrey’s “Neutrinos on ice” was flat out awesome.

In the last section, the pieces were mostly okay, but Kathryn Smith’s “March of the King Crabs” was very good and Rhian Salmon’s “Waiting for the polar sunrise” was an excellent narration of science, everyday work and prepping then waiting for your experiments to begin.

Rebecca Priestley has done an amazing job putting together this collection. I heartily recommend reading it. It was hard to put down once you picked it up.