(6 X 9, 672 pages, b&w photos, maps, illustrations) As much about the explorers who braved impossible odds as it is about each expedition, Arctic Grail is an epic account of the Golden Age of Exploration at the top of the world. Travel with the adventurer Roald Amundsen, the cool Norwegian who completed a voyage in a tiny sloop that the British Navy failed to accomplish with its great three-masted ships Frederick Cook, who lied about reaching the North Pole and finally, the ruthless and paranoid Robert Peary, who claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1909.

Journey across the ice with a Who's Who of polar explorers, men of every temperament, including the pious and ambitious Edward Perry, the first explorer to probe deep into the Arctic labyrinth Adolphus Greely, a Civil War veteran who had to watch his men starve to death on Ellesmere Island Robert McClure, who claimed that he was the first to find the fabled Northwest Passage and the flawed hero John Franklin, a meek naval officer whose expeditions were responsible for the deaths of more men than those of any other Arctic explorer. From the Back Cover:Ĭulled from extensive research of handwritten diaries and private journals, Arctic Grail is the definitive book on the age of arctic exploration and adventure. Pierre Berton, who won his first Governor General's award for The Mysterious North, here again gives us an important and fascinating history that reads like a novel as he examines the historic events of the golden age of Arctic exploration. They include Charles Hall, an obscure printer who abandoned family and business to head to a frozen world of which he knew nothing John Ross, whose naval career ended when he spotted a range of mountains that didn't exist Frederick Cook, who faked reaching the North Pole and Jane Franklin, who forced an expensive search for her missing husband upon a reluctant British government.

These quests are peopled with remarkable figures full of passion and eccentricity.

He also credits the Inuit, whose tracking and hunting skills saved the lives of the adventurers and their men countless times. Pierre Berton's #1 best-selling book brings to life the great explorers: the pious and ambitious Edward Parry, the flawed hero John Franklin, ruthless Robert Peary and the cool Norwegian Roald Amundsen. Scores of nineteenth-century expeditions battled savage cold, relentless ice and winter darkness in pursuit of two great prizes: the quest for the elusive Passage linking the Atlantic and the Pacific and the international race to reach the North Pole.

The arctic grail pierre berton