Die Polarfahrt

It was seen as a blind spot, a problem, the end of the world, and an eternally unsolved mystery: the North Pole. While others puzzled and calculated, a mad newspaper publisher took action in pursuit of sensational stories. He bought a ship, chose a captain, and sent thirty-three men into the ice in July 1879—firmly convinced of the theory of an open polar sea. However, north of the Bering Strait, the USS Jeannette became trapped in the pack ice. What followed was one of the harshest survival struggles in history; miles-long marches over the frozen sea, snow blindness, frostbite, storms, and hunger pushed the crew to their physical and mental limits. With narrative power and an unparalleled sense of drama, Hampton Sides unfolds in his bestseller the tragic story of this great, failed polar expedition and reveals the fatal consequences of false hypotheses and the madness of human ambition for glory.