
A Wretched and Precarious Situation
In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier
David Welky(Author)
WW Norton & Co (Publisher)
Published on 25. November 2016
Book
Hardback
512 pages
978-0-393-25441-9 (ISBN)
Description
In 1906, from the ice fields northwest of Greenland, Commander Robert E. Peary spotted an unknown land in the distance. He called it "Crocker Land". Scientists and explorers agreed that Peary had found a new continent. Several years later, two of his disciples, George Borup and Donald MacMillan-with the sponsorship of the American Museum of Natural History-assembled a team to investigate. They pitched their two-year mission as a scientific tour de force to fill in the last blank space on the globe. But the Crocker Land Expedition became a five-year ordeal that endured a fatal boating accident, a drunken captain, a shipwreck, marooned rescue parties, disease, dissension and a crewman-turned-murderer. Based on a trove of unpublished letters, diaries and field notes, A Wretched and Precarious Situation is a harrowing adventure.
Reviews / Votes
"Unravels the strange story of one of the world's greatest discoveries that never was." -- National Geographic "Polar historians will be grateful to have the Crocker Land expedition properly documented." -- The New York Times Book ReviewMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Rough front
Illustrations
16 pages of illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 168 mm
Thickness: 41 mm
Weight
732 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-393-25441-9 (9780393254419)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
11/2016
W. W. Norton & Company
€16.49
Available for download
Person
David Welky is the author of The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937, The Moguls and the Dictators: Hollywood and the Coming of World War II, and other books. He is a professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas.