The Ends of the Earth

Categories: Science , Travel , Staff Picks , Nonfiction

I’m partly through this new book and I just noticed that it has two front covers, two editors, two tables of contents, two introductions, and two sub-subtitles.  On one side, it’s called The Ends of the Earth:  An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic:  The Arctic, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert.  On the other side it’s called The Ends of the Earth:  An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic:  The Antarctic, edited by Francis Spufford.

Okay, so the publishers will be disappointed that I missed the clever upside-down, half-and-half presentation, but they should be pleased how much I’m enjoying the first inside half. 

I started with the Antarctic, since as you may remember I’m a big fan of Beryl Bainbridge’s The Birthday Boys. 

Spufford doesn’t include any passages from Bainbridge’s novel (though there are some fiction excerpts), but of course the selection does include passages from the writings of Ernest Shackleton, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Roald Amundson, and the most chillingly iconic of all Antarctic writings, Robert Scott’s posthumously discovered diary of his party’s fatal attempt to reach the South Pole.  Spufford also includes some contemporary writers—needless to say, things have changed at the ends of the Earth since the days of the frontier explorers.

A look at the second table of contents shows that Kolbert includes Robert Peary, Knud Rasmussen, and fiction writers Jack London, Halldor Laxness, and Jules Verne among her selections, as well as a passage from her own writings about the Arctic sea ice in the Arctic half of the anthology.

The anthology was published in conjunction with the 2007-2008 fourth International Polar Year, which, as Kolbert notes “to accommodate researchers in Antarctica, actually lasts until March 2009.”

So find yourself a nice warm spot to read this before March.