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Zusatztext "Nansen was the Chuck Yeager of polar exploration." —The New York Times Book Review In 1893 Fridtjof Nansen set sail for the North Pole in the Fram! a ship specially designed to be frozen into the polar ice cap! withstand its crush-ing pressures! and travel north with the sea's drift. Experts said that such a ship couldn't be built and that the mission was tantamount to suicide. Farthest North! first published in 1897 to great popular appeal! is the stirring first-person account of the Fram and her historic voyage. Nansen tells of his expedition's struggle against snowdrifts! ice floes! polar bears! scurvy! gnawing hunger! and the seemingly endless polar night that transformed the Fram into a "cold prison of loneliness." Once it became clear that the Fram could drift no farther! Nansen and crew member Hjalmar Johansen set out on a harrowing fifteen-month sledge journey to reach their destination by foot! which required them to share a sleeping bag of rotting reindeer fur and to feed the weaker sled dogs to the stronger ones. In the end! they traveled 146 miles farther north than any Westerner had gone before! representing the greatest single gain in polar exploration in four centuries. Farthest North is an unforgettable story that marks the beginning of the modern age of exploration and is a must-read for the armchair adventurer. Born in Norway in 1861! Fridtjof Nansen was a renowned explorer! author! artist! athlete! oceanographer! and statesman. In 1922 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He died! a national hero! in 1930. Jon Krakauer is the author of Into Thin Air! which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize! and Into the Wild. His work has appeared in many magazines! including Outside! Smithsonian! and National Geographic. He chose the books in the Modern Library Exploration series for their literary merit and historical significance—-and because he found them such a pleasure to read. Informationen zum Autor Dr. Fridjtof Nansen Klappentext In 1893, Fridjtof Nansen set sail in the Fram, a ship specially designed and built to be frozen into the polar ice cap, withstand its crushing pressures, and travel with the sea's drift closer to the North Pole than anyone had ever gone before. Experts said such a ship couldn't be built and that the voyage was tantamount to suicide. This brilliant first-person account, originally published in 1897, marks the beginning of the modern age of exploration. Nansen vividly describes the dangerous voyage and his 15-month-long dash to the North Pole by sledge. Farthest North is an unforgettable tale and a must-read for any armchair explorer.Roland Huntford By the end of the nineteenth century, most of the world had been explored. After the scramble for Africa, the polar regions were the last great blanks upon the map. They saw the last act of terrestrial discovery before the leap into space. Farthest North is part of that record. Its author was a hero of his times. Like Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Grieg, Fridtjof Nansen was one of the celebrated Norwegians who emerged from northern mists and helped to mold the age. Born on October 10, 1861, he belonged to the extraordinary Norwegian renaissance of the nineteenth century. He was an example of a great man from a small country. He was the father of modern polar exploration. Farthest North is the tale of his revolutionary attempt to reach the North Pole. Instead of fighting Nature, like most of his predecessors, Nansen proposed working with her. His idea was to freeze a vessel into the Arctic pack ice and drift with the pack toward the Pole. He had a wooden ship specially designed, with round, smooth bilges, the purpose of which was to allow the ship to rise when squeezed, thus escaping the pressure of the pack rather than trying to resist it. He called her Fram—"Forward." On June 24, 1893, she sailed. Three months...
