front cover of Alone
Alone
The Classic Polar Adventure
Richard E. Byrd
Island Press, 1966

When Admiral Richard E. Byrd set out on his second Antarctic expedition in 1934, he was already an international hero for having piloted the first flights over the North and South Poles. His plan for this latest adventure was to spend six months alone near the bottom of the world, gathering weather data and indulging his desire “to taste peace and quiet long enough to know how good they really are.” But early on things went terribly wrong. Isolated in the pervasive polar night with no hope of release until spring, Byrd began suffering inexplicable symptoms of mental and physical illness. By the time he discovered that carbon monoxide from a defective stovepipe was poisoning him, Byrd was already engaged in a monumental struggle to save his life and preserve his sanity.

When Alone was first published in 1938, it became an enormous bestseller. This edition keeps alive Byrd’s unforgettable narrative for new generations of readers.

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The Discovery of a New World (Mundus Alter Et Idem)
Written Originally in Latin by Joseph Hall, Ca. 1605
Joseph Hall
Harvard University Press
The Antarctic Continent was inhabited, it seems, in the days of Queen Elizabeth by four main peoples, the crapulous folk of Tenter-belly, the vira-goes of Shee-landt, the morons of Fooliana, and the pirates and highwaymen of Theevingen. The author of this voyage pretends to have visited all these places, and records his impressions with the circumstantial pen of a journalist, and with an energy and relish barely surpassed by Rabelais himself. The result is unique, for it is the only authentic legend of the Antarctic, and yet it is also a fantasy, a burlesque, a satire, and an encyclopedia of learning, all in one salvo. The editor’s devoted but unobtrusive labors have made this first modern edition of an excessively rare text definitive, and it goes forth with the enthusiastic endorsement of the great explorer to whose achievement it is dedicated as a fitting token of homage.
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