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Edward IV and the Wars of the Roses
by David SantiusteThis fascinating account of an unsung English monarch and military leader is &“a pleasing and well-informed appraisal of the first Yorkist king&” (Dr. Michael Jones, author of Bosworth 1485: Psychology of a Battle). Indisputably the most effective general of the Wars of the Roses in fifteenth-century England, King Edward IV died in his bed, undefeated in battle. Yet he has never been accorded the martial reputation of other English warrior kings such as Henry V. It has been suggested that perhaps he lacked the personal discipline expected of a truly great army commander. But, as the author shows in this perceptive and highly readable new study, Edward was a formidable military leader whose strengths and subtleties have never been fully recognized—perhaps because he fought most of his battles against his own people in a civil war. This reassessment of Edward&’s military skill—and of the Wars of the Roses in which he played such a vital part—provides fascinating insight into Edward the man as well as the politician and battlefield commander. Based on contemporary sources and the latest scholarly research, Edward IV and the Wars of the Roses stands as &“a valuable and thought-provoking addition to the canon, which ought to become required reading for anyone interested in the reign of the first Yorkist monarch&” (The Ricardian).
Eighteenth-Century British Premiers: Walpole to the Younger Pitt
by Dick LeonardFollowing his earlier surveys of 19th and 20th Century British Prime Ministers, Dick Leonard turns his attention to their 18th Century predecessors, including such major figures as Robert Walpole, the Elder Pitt (Lord Chatham), Lord North and the Younger Pitt.
Einstein on the Road
by Josef EisingerAt the height of his fame, Albert Einstein traveled throughout the world, from Japan to South America and many places in between. During these voyages, between 1922 and 1933, he was in the habit of keeping travel diaries in which he recorded his impressions of people and events, as well as his musings on everything from music and politics to quantum mechanics and psychoanalysis. These fascinating recordsare now here published in thier entirety, painting an engaging personal portrait of Einstein the man.The author has created a vivid and entertaining narrative that brings Einstein's voice to the fore. During Einstein's travels far and wide, he meets with royalty, presidents, movie stars, and artists--Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Fritz Kreisler, and Sinclair Lewis, as well as the most eminent scientists of the time, including Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, and Edwin Hubble.In his travel entries, we read his candid impressions of the Far East during a long sea voyage to Japan (1922), where Einstein is welcomed with enormous enthusiasm, and steals the show at an imperial reception. He and Elsa visit and explore many Japanese cities, as well as Singapore, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Barcelona, Madrid, and Jerusalem, where Einstein cogitates on Zionism and sees it in action. In 1931, the couple spends eight weeks in Pasadena, where Einstein enjoys fruitful interactions with scientists at Caltech and the Mount Wilson observatory. This portion of the diaries contains illuminating observations about America, science, and the Hollywood celebrities he encounters. He returns to Caltech two more times, and enjoys two extended sojourns in another academic sanctuary, Oxford University. Back at home in Berlin, his diary shows his deep involvement with the academic, social, and cultural life of the German capital, and with the politics of the Weimar Republic. He discusses books, dinner parties, plays, concerts, and sailing, but his greatest passion, apart from physics, is music; he is never happier than when playing chamber music, preferably Mozart--and he does so at every opportunity. A lifelong pacifist, he watches the rise of the Nazis with anxiety, and when Hitler gains control in 1933, he renounces pacifism and searches for a place of refuge. He finds it in Princeton, New Jersey, where he joins the newly created Institute for Advanced Study and becomes an American, never more to roam. Filled with memorable vignettes, this singular book provides a window into the thoughts and opinions of the twentieth century's most celebrated scientist and allows us to share in his exhilarating experiences.
Eisenhower
by Jim Newton"Newton's contribution is as cogent an inventory of Eisenhower's White House years as I've ever read. He blends masterful writing with historic detail and provides the value-added of Ike as the man and the leader."--Chuck Hagel, Distinguished Professor, Georgetown University; U.S. Senator (1997-2009)Newly discovered and declassified documents make for a surprising and revealing portrait of the president we thought we knew.America's thirty-fourth president was belittled by his critics as the babysitter-in-chief. This new look reveals how wrong they were. Dwight Eisenhower was bequeathed the atomic bomb and refused to use it. He ground down Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism until both became, as he said, "McCarthywasm." He stimulated the economy to lift it from recession, built an interstate highway system, turned an $8 billion deficit in 1953 into a $500 million surplus in 1960. (Ike was the last President until Bill Clinton to leave his country in the black.) The President Eisenhower of popular imagination is a benign figure, armed with a putter, a winning smile, and little else. The Eisenhower of veteran journalist Jim Newton's rendering is shrewd, sentimental, and tempestuous. He mourned the death of his first son and doted on his grandchildren but could, one aide recalled, "peel the varnish off a desk" with his temper. Mocked as shallow and inarticulate, he was in fact a meticulous manager. Admired as a general, he was a champion of peace. In Korea and Vietnam, in Quemoy and Berlin, his generals urged him to wage nuclear war. Time and again he considered the idea and rejected it. And it was Eisenhower who appointed the liberal justices Earl Warren and William Brennan and who then called in the military to enforce desegregation in the schools.Rare interviews, newly discovered records, and fresh insights undergird this gripping and timely narrative.JIM NEWTON is a veteran journalist who began his career as clerk to James Reston at the New York Times. Since then, he has worked as a reporter at the Atlanta Constitution and as a reporter, bureau chief and editor at the Los Angeles Times, where he presently is the editor-at-large and author of a weekly column. He also is an educator and author, whose acclaimed biography of Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made, was published in 2006. He lives in Pasadena, CA.From the Hardcover edition.
The Electric Jesus
by Jonathan Talat Phillips Graham HancockWhen Jonathan Talat Phillips experiences a devastating loss as a countercultural media activist, he unwittingly starts on a mystical journey marked by underground ayahuasca ceremonies, kundalini awakenings, prankster spirit guides, extraterrestrial encounters at the Burning Man festival, and miraculous energy healings that reshape his skeptical worldview. Along the way, he chronicles the rise of an international movement that is trailblazing visionary ways to address our current planetary crisis through raised consciousness. To better understand his spiritual journey, Jonathan delves into his own Christian background, discovering the lost rites of the mystery schools. Uncovering secret "electric" meanings behind biblical symbols like the serpent, dove, and tree of life, he reveals how early Christians utilized a radical initiation process for harnessing divine energy in order to achieve gnosis, direct knowledge or experience of the divine. Jonathan suggests that these mystical symbols, which appear in spiritual traditions across the globe, offer a profound energetic roadmap and alchemical message for personal transformation, as well as a potential evolutionary shift for our world.About the Imprint: EVOLVER EDITIONS promotes a new counterculture that recognizes humanity's visionary potential and takes tangible, pragmatic steps to realize it. EVOLVER EDITIONS explores the dynamics of personal, collective, and global change from a wide range of perspectives. EVOLVER EDITIONS is an imprint of North Atlantic Books and is produced in collaboration with Evolver, LLC.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Elephant Scientist
by Caitlin O'Connell Donna M. JacksonIn the sprawling African scrub desert of Etosha National Park, they call her "the mother of all elephants." Camouflaged and peering through binoculars, Caitlin O'Connell--the American scientist who traveled to Namibia to study African elephants in their natural habitat--could not believe what she was seeing. As the mighty matriarch scanned the horizon, the other elephants followed suit, stopping midstride and standing as still as statues. The observation would be one of many to guide O'Connell to a groundbreaking discovery!<P><P> Winner of the Sibert Medal
Elf Girl
by Rev JenMeet Rev Jen, patron saint of the uncool, cheerleader for nonconformists, geeks, and oddballs the world over. From her tiny rent-controlled apartment on Manhattan's hip Lower East Side, she holds court over a wacky cast of friends and lovers with an unchecked candor that makes her impossible not to love. Zany and wry, Rev Jen will charm readers with these fun and irreverent true stories of her meteoric rise from art school misfit to neighborhood celebrity and all-around good-time gal. Whether she is dressing up as Doo-Doo, the hard-drinking Teletubby who's been expelled from Teletubbyland, or starring in her one-woman musical Rats, the shortest running show on Broadway, Jen's quirky humor and genuine heart make Elf Girl an anthem for misfits everywhere. f, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was hailed as a must-read by Bust magazine, The Village Voice, Bookslut.com, and many more, Elf Girl is infused with Jen's zany sense of humor and a surprising amount of heart. Featuring an Introduction by Bored to Death creator Jonathan Ames, who even based a character on Rev Jen (elf ears and all!) in the HBO hit show's second season, this is an anthem for dorky girls everywhere--a sharply observant and entertaining memoir.
Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock
by David MargolickThe names Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery may not be well known, but the image of them from September 1957 surely is: a black high school girl, dressed in white, walking stoically in front of Little Rock Central High School, and a white girl standing directly behind her, face twisted in hate, screaming racial epithets. This famous photograph captures the full anguish of desegregation--in Little Rock and throughout the South--and an epic moment in the civil rights movement. In this gripping book, David Margolick tells the remarkable story of two separate lives unexpectedly braided together. He explores how the haunting picture of Elizabeth and Hazel came to be taken, its significance in the wider world, and why, for the next half-century, neither woman has ever escaped from its long shadow. He recounts Elizabeth's struggle to overcome the trauma of her hate-filled school experience, and Hazel's long efforts to atone for a fateful, horrible mistake. The book follows the painful journey of the two as they progress from apology to forgiveness to reconciliation and, amazingly, to friendship. This friendship foundered, then collapsed--perhaps inevitably--over the same fissures and misunderstandings that continue to permeate American race relations more than half a century after the unforgettable photograph at Little Rock. And yet, as Margolick explains, a bond between Elizabeth and Hazel, silent but complex, endures.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: A Friendship That Changed the World
by Penny Colman<p>In the Spring of 1851 two women met on a street corner in Seneca Falls, New York—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a thirty-five year old mother of four boys, and Susan B. Anthony, a thirty-one year old, unmarried, former school teacher. Immediately drawn to each other, they formed an everlasting and legendary friendship. Together they challenged entrenched beliefs, customs, and laws that oppressed women and spearheaded the fight to gain legal rights, including the right to vote despite fierce opposition, daunting conditions, scandalous entanglements and betrayal by their friends and allies. <p>Weaving events, quotations, personalities, and commentary into a page-turning narrative, Penny Colman tells this compelling story and vividly portrays the friendship between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, a friendship that changed history.</p>
Elizabeth I: The Novel
by Margaret GeorgeThe New York Times bestseller from Margaret George--a captivating novel about history's most enthralling queen, the legendary Elizabeth Tudor.England's greatest monarch has baffled and intrigued the world for centuries. But what was the Virgin Queen really like? Lettice Knollys--Elizabeth's flame-haired, look-alike coussin--thinks she knows all too well. Elizabeth's rival for the love of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and mother to the Earl of Essex, the mercurial nobleman who challenged Elizabeth's throne, Lettice has been intertwined with Elizabeth since childhood. This is a story of two women of fierce intellect and desire, one trying to protect her country, and throne, the other trying to regain power and position for her family. Their rivalry, and its ensuing drama, soon involves everyone close to Elizabeth, from the famed courtiers who enriched the crown to the legendary poets and playwrights who paid homage to it with their works. Filled with intimate portraits of the personalities who made the Elizabethan age great--Shakespeare, Marlowe, Dudley, Raleigh, Drake--Elizabeth I provides an unforgettable glimpse of a woman who considered herself married to her people. A queen who ruled as much from the heart as from the head.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Elizabeth I, the People's Queen: Her Life and Times, 21 Activities
by Kerrie HollihanOne of England's most fascinating monarchs is brought to life in this hands-on study for young minds. Combining projects, pictures, and sidebars with an authoritative biography, children will develop an understanding of the Reformation, Shakespearean England, and how Elizabeth's 45-year reign set the stage for the English Renaissance and marshaled her country into a chief military power. Providing 21 activities, from singing a madrigal and growing a knot garden to creating a period costume--complete with a neck ruff and a cloak for the queen's court--readers will experience a sliver of life in the Elizabethan age. For those who wish to delve deeper, a time line, online resources, and a reading list are included to aid in further study.
Elizabeth Taylor
by Kitty Kelley"Shimmering in blue sequins and periwinkle eye shadow, Elizabeth Taylor strode onto the stage of the Mark Hellinger Theater to present the 1981 Antoinette Perry Award for Broadway's best musical...As she started to speak, the entire audience suddenly rose to give her a standing ovation. Wildly cheering, the crowd paid homage to the woman whose beauty had for so long enchanted the America. Now ripe and opulent at forty-nine, she no longer looked like the little girl who had ridden to glory in National Velvet; but the audience did not care, She could still bestow a touch of magic."--from the preface This biography of Elizabeth Taylor tells her story as no other can. Drawing on extensive reporting and interviews, Kitty Kelley's classic portrait follows the rise, fall, and rebirth of the woman who was perhaps Hollywood's brightest star. Now with a new Afterword by the author, this is the definitive record of Elizabeth Taylor's fascinating life.
Elizabeth Taylor: A Loving Tribute
by Cindy De La HozFrom National Velvet to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, through eight marriages, White Diamonds, and years of tireless humanitarian work, Elizabeth Taylor achieved truly iconic status. She made her screen debut in 1942 and ever after the public has been enamored of the famously violet-eyed legend. Why we love her is easy to see--we were astonished by her beauty, engrossed by her movie performances, and fascinated by her jet-setting lifestyle. This little book offers up more reminders of why, for more than seventy years, we always loved Elizabeth Taylor.
Elizabeth Taylor
by David BretFrom her fairytale childhood to her impressive array of movies and marriages, Elizabeth Taylor's life, both on and off the screen, has enchanted, saddened, appalled, and entertained us for the past seven decades.Elizabeth Taylor: The Lady, The Lover, The Legend -- the first new biography to be published following her death -- strips away the Hollywood veneer to reveal the woman as she really was. Through his incredible depth of knowledge, biographer David Bret sheds new light on the Elizabeth Taylor we thought we knew: her feud with Louis B. Mayer, her friendship with Montgomery Clift, the abuse she suffered at the hands of Nicky Hilton, the real story behind the Taylor-Fisher-Reynolds love triangle -- and, of course, her epic relationship with Richard Burton, just as stormy in real life as it was on film. With compassion and admiration, Bret describes Taylor's later years, including her fight for AIDS awareness and support for gay rights, her strange friendship with Michael Jackson, and her deteriorating health leading up to her untimely death on March 23, 2011.Elizabeth Taylor: The Lady, The Lover, The Legend is a shockingly honest, richly detailed book about one of the greatest Hollywood superstars of all time.
Elizabeth Taylor, A Passion for Life
by Joseph PapaFrom the time she appeared in National Velvet, the film that skyrocketed her to international fame at age twelve in 1944, until her death, Elizabeth Taylor's beauty, allure, and personal strength captivated the world. In a career that spanned more than sixty years, she brought her raw talent and magnetism to bear in now classic films such as Father of the Bride, Suddenly, Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Giant, Cleopatra, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Off screen, she lived just as passionately. That intensity brought her enormous joy and pain--and notoriety, whether it was from her vast collections of extraordinary fine jewelry and art to her battles with addiction and ill heath, from her internationally recognized humanitarian efforts on behalf of AIDS to her scandalous love affairs and seven highly scrutinized marriages.This anthology reveals the candor and honesty with which the actress led her extraordinary life. Here are Elizabeth's first-person reflections on her childhood, career, love and marriages, motherhood, beauty, aging, extravagances, charity, and sense of self. Whether witty or poignant, these words are always demonstrative of her generous, unapologetic, and fiercely determined nature, reflecting the essence of a great star and legendary modern woman.
Elizabeth Taylor, A Passion for Life
by Joseph PapaFrom the time she appeared in National Velvet, the film that skyrocketed her to international fame at age twelve in 1944, until her death, Elizabeth Taylor's beauty, allure, and personal strength captivated the world. In a career that spanned more than sixty years, she brought her raw talent and magnetism to bear in now classic films such as Father of the Bride, Suddenly, Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Giant, Cleopatra, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Off screen, she lived just as passionately. That intensity brought her enormous joy and pain-and notoriety, whether it was from her vast collections of extraordinary fine jewelry and art to her battles with addiction and ill heath, from her internationally recognized humanitarian efforts on behalf of AIDS to her scandalous love affairs and seven highly scrutinized marriages. This anthology reveals the candor and honesty with which the actress led her extraordinary life. Here are Elizabeth's first-person reflections on her childhood, career, love and marriages, motherhood, beauty, aging, extravagances, charity, and sense of self. Whether witty or poignant, these words are always demonstrative of her generous, unapologetic, and fiercely determined nature, reflecting the essence of a great star and legendary modern woman.
Ellen Terry, Spheres of Influence (Dramatic Lives #1)
by Katharine CockinIn this essay collection, established experts and new researchers, reassess the performances and cultural significance of Ellen Terry, her daughter Edith Craig (1869–1947) and her son Edward Gordon Craig (1872–1966), as well as Bram Stoker, Lewis Carroll and some less familiar figures.
Elliott Carter (American Composers)
by James WierzbickiThis compact introduction to the life and works of composer Elliott Carter provides a fresh perspective on one of the most significant American composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A leading voice of the American classical music tradition and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, Carter was initially encouraged to become a composer by Charles Ives, and he went on to learn from Walter Piston at Harvard University and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Drawing on Carter's voluminous writings and compositions, James Wierzbicki provides a clear discussion of Carter's evolving understanding of musical time and the influence of film on his work. Celebrating his 100th birthday in 2008 by premiering a number of new compositions, Carter has been a powerful presence on the American new music scene, an important connection to American music's foundational figures, and a dynamic force in its continuing evolution.
Elly Peterson: "Mother" of the Moderates
by Sara Fitzgerald"A magisterially written, well-researched, informative, and entertaining biography of a woman who helped throw open the doors to broader participation and power for women in the Republican Party and American politics. "--Dave Dempsey, author of William G. Milliken : Michigan's Passionate Moderate. Elly Peterson was one of the highest ranking women in the Republican Party. In 1964 she ran for a Michigan seat in the U. S. Senate and became the first woman to serve as chair of the Michigan Republican Party. During the 1970s she grew disenchanted with the increasing conservatism of her party, united with other feminists to push for the Equal Rights Amendment and reproductive choice, battled Phyllis Schlafly to wrest control from her of the National Federation of Republican Women, and became an independent. Elly Peterson's story is a missing chapter in the political history of Michigan, as well as the United States. This new biography, written by Sara Fitzgerald (a Michigan native and former Washington Post editor), finally gives full credit to one of the first female political leaders in this country. When Peterson retired in 1970 as assistant chairman of the Republican National Committee, David Broder of the Post wrote that her abilities would have earned her the national chairmanship were it not for the unwritten sex barrier that both parties have erected around that job. "--
Elogio del insomnio
by Alberto Ruy SánchezUna mezcla de autobiografía, crónica, poesía y relato del autor Alberto Ruy Sánchez. Por Alberto Ruy Sánchez, reconocido como Oficial de la Orden de las Artes y de las Letras por el gobierno de Francia y autor de La mano del fuego. El insomne, abandonándose a la deriva como un viejo y el mar de estos días, o estas noches, navega al azar las corrientes de la madrugada que más bien lo navegan a él. Cada oleada embravecida se convierte en una aventura, un relato, una imagen que viene de muy lejos en el tiempo o en la geografía. Y él lo atrapa y nos lo cuenta cada vez como si fuera el último trozo flotante que lo salva. Porque este insomne goza sus insomnios. En medio de la obscuridad, cada insomnio es felicidad luminosa, la luz que se vuelve el ámbito donde el inmenso placer de contar y escuchar historias toma existencia. Con cinco novelas sobre un mundo que celebra el erotismo, en cuyo centro se encuentra la ciudad de Mogador, Alberto Ruy Sánchez tiene tras de sí una trayectoria vital diversa y sorprendente, algunos de cuyos episodios cuenta en esta obra, compuesta de ingredientes como la autobiografía, la crónica, la poesía y el relato verdadero de las ficciones que se viven. Lo que ha dicho la crítica: "Todas las personas que han pasado la noche en vela por un dolor de muelas o una decepción amorosa tienen la obligación de incluir en su botiquín un libro: Elogio del insomnio." -Xavier Velasco. "Alberto Ruy Sánchez, valiéndose no sólo de un subgénero literario llámese ensayo, autobiografía, cuento, crónica, sino la mezcla de los anteriores, conpoemas que escucha, recuerda, fotografías de sus viajes y con una claridad en el lenguaje en Elogio del insomnio, nos transfiere su baraka, el conocimiento, sus historias, su infancia y sus momentos de insomnio". -Alan Saint Martin, Revista de la Universidad (UNAM).
Embers of Childhood: Growing Up a Whitney
by Flora Miller BiddleA Look into the Privileged World of the American Aristocracy of the Early Twentieth Century Flora Miller Biddle was born a blue-blood. The granddaughter of the Whitney museum founder, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, her childhood played out in a sort of Wharton landscape as she was shielded from the woes of the world. But money itself is not the source of happiness. Glimpses into the elegance of a Vanderbilt ball thrown by her great-grandparents and the yearly production of traveling from her childhood home on Long Island to their summer home in Aiken, South Carolina, are measured against memoires of strict governesses with stricter rules in a childhood separate from her parents, despite being in the same house, and the ever-present pressure to measure up in her studies and lessons. As Flora steps back in time to trace the origins of her family’s fortune and where it stands today, she takes a discerning look at how wealth and excess shaped her life, for better and for worse.In this wonderfully evocative memoir, Flora Miller Biddle examines, critiques, and pays homage to the people and places of her childhood that shaped her life.
The Emergence of Russian Liberalism
by Julia BerestA fresh perspective on the history of Russian liberalism through the life and work of Alexander Kunitsyn, a teacher and philosopher of natural law, whose academic and journalistic writings contributed to the dissemination of Western liberal thought among the Russian public.
Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life
by Vivian GornickEmma Goldman is the story of a modern radical who took seriously the idea that inner liberation is the first business of social revolution. Her politics, from beginning to end, was based on resistance to that which thwarted the free development of the inner self. The right to stay alive in one's senses, to enjoy freedom of thought and speech, to reject the arbitrary use of power--these were key demands in the many public protest movements she helped mount. Anarchist par excellence, Goldman is one of the memorable political figures of our time, not because of her gift for theory or analysis or even strategy, but because some extraordinary force of life in her burned, without rest or respite, on behalf of human integrity--and she was able to make the thousands of people who, for decades on end, flocked to her lectures, feel intimately connected to the pain inherent in the abuse of that integrity. To hear Emma describe, in language as magnetic as it was illuminating, what the boot felt like on the neck, was to experience the mythic quality of organized oppression. As the women and men in her audience listened to her, the homeliness of their own small lives became invested with a sense of drama that acted as a catalyst for the wild, vagrant hope that things need not always be as they were. All you had to do, she promised, was resist. In time, she herself would become a world-famous symbol for the spirit of resistance to the power of institutional authority over the lone individual. In Emma Goldman, Vivian Gornick draws a surpassingly intimate and insightful portrait of a woman of heroic proportions whose performance on the stage of history did what Tolstoy said a work of art should do: it made people love life more.
Emma Watson: The Biography
by David NolanDavid Nolan provides a detailed insight into Emma Watson's career, the highs and lows of being a child star and how she is moving on from Harry Potter balancing the world of fashion with her academic studies in America.
An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science (Playaway Adult Nonfiction Ser.)
by Edward J. LarsonA Pulitzer Prize–winning author examines South Pole expeditions, &“wrapping the science in plenty of dangerous drama to keep readers engaged&” (Booklist). An Empire of Ice presents a fascinating new take on Antarctic exploration—placing the famed voyages of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, his British rivals Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton, and others in a larger scientific, social, and geopolitical context. Recounting the Antarctic expeditions of the early twentieth century, the author reveals the British efforts for what they actually were: massive scientific enterprises in which reaching the South Pole was but a spectacular sideshow. By focusing on the larger purpose of these legendary adventures, Edward J. Larson deepens our appreciation of the explorers&’ achievements, shares little-known stories, and shows what the Heroic Age of Antarctic discovery was really about. &“Rather than recounting the story of the race to the pole chronologically, Larson concentrates on various scientific disciplines (like meteorology, glaciology and paleontology) and elucidates the advances made by the polar explorers . . . Covers a lot of ground—science, politics, history, adventure.&” —The New York Times Book Review