The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andree and the Heroic Age of Artic Exploration. Alec Wilkinson, Knopf Publishing Group, 2012

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Until I saw the review of this book in the New York Times Book Review, I had no idea anyone had tried to find the North Pole by balloon.  In addition to telling the story of Andree, the book also tells the story of Adolphus Greely (1881-1884) and Fridtjof Nanen’s Fram expedition of 1893-1896. 

It seems naïve that Andree thought he could fly a balloon to the North Pole and return in a few weeks, but that is exactly what he proposed to do in 1897.  After spending several years planning and constructing his balloon, he and two other companions set off from the northmost point of Sweden, never to be seen alive again.  Pigeons sent back by Andree gave misleading information and all efforts to find Andree and his men were unsucessful.  According to Andree’s jounal, found with his remains in 1930, the balloon had crashed after three days because the fabric was unable to hold sufficient hydrogen to keep it aloft.  Along with the journal, photographs tell the story of the three’s efforts to make it south.  At first successful in keeping warm and fed by  hunting bears and seals, the men eventually sucummed to the harsh conditions and died. 

The North Pole has since been conguored by airplane, skis, sleds, and motor car, but it was not until 2010 that French explorer Jean-Louis Etienne completed the first solo balloon trip across the North Pole.

This fast paced book is very much worth reading, if not for the history of the polar exploits, but for the effect that these explorations had on the participants, the family, and the nations.

Reviewer: Dorothy Pittman

Into the Silence: the Great war, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest, Wade Davis, Knopft Publishing Group. 2011.

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One can almost smell the hubris and testerone when reading this book about the men who tried to conquor Everest in the 1920s.  Davis goes into great detail about the World War I experiences of the various members of the Everest explorations in the 1920s.  Included in the narrative is a short history of Britain’s influence in the political affairs of the Tibet, China, and the other countries sitting atop the Himalayas. 

Davis details how each of the three explorations were planned and executed.  The underlying reason seems to be that because Britain had not bee successful in the search for either of the Poles and no one had been lost in an effort to ascent to the top of the highest mountain, then it was up to Britain to conguor it.  Because of that, anyone who was not a true “Brit” was excluded from the first expedition even if the individual had experience in high altitude climbing.

Anyone who has read Into Thin Air  and books on Everest and Mallory will enjoy reading this extensively reseasrch book.

Reviewer: Dorothy Pittman

Barnaby Grimes

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The creators of the Edge Chronicles, author Paul Stewart and illustrator Chris Riddell, have created a new series featuring Barnaby Grimes, a tick-tock lad, who “highstacks” across the tall buildings of Dickensian London to deliver messages, documents, and other items as contracted to do for its businessmen and residents.

In the first of the series, Curse of the Night Wolf, Barnaby is attached by an enormous dog and soon finds himself in the world of a very unusual doctor who dispenses a special cordial to the poor and unknown, and a lady seamstress who creates fashions with the much-desired “Wesphalian Trim.”

After delivery a strange parcel to a boy’s school headmaster, Barnaby becomes concerned when he finds that the students have imprisoned the master and are dressed in feathers and war paint. In the Return of the Emerald Skull, he must solve the puzzle of the school before it is too late for the headmaster.

Barnaby does not believe his eyes when he see the decaying body of the leader of the gangs in London rises up from his own grave.  Faced with a Legion of the Dead, Barnaby must find a way to defeat them before they take over the city.

There is a Phantom in Blood Alley that can disappear into then air. After an experiment with photographic chemical goes disastrously wrong, it is up to Barnaby to find the mad chemist before an innocent person is tried for murder.

Reviewer: Dorothy Pittman