In the late 1800s, “Arctic Fever” swept across the nation as dozens of American expeditions sailed north to the Arctic to find a sea route to Asia and, ultimately, to stand at the North Pole. Few of these missions were successful, and many men lost their lives en route. Yet failure did little to dampen the enthusiasm of new explorers or the crowds at home that cheered them on. Arctic exploration, Michael F. Robinson argues, was an activity that unfolded in America as much as it did in the wintry hinterland. Paying particular attention to the perils facing explorers at home, The Coldest Crucible examines their struggles to build support for the expeditions before departure, defend their claims upon their return, and cast themselves as men worthy of the nation’s full attention. In so doing, this book paints a new portrait of polar voyagers, one that removes them from the icy backdrop of the Arctic and sets them within the tempests of American cultural life. 

With chronological chapters featuring emblematic Arctic explorers—including Elisha Kent Kane, Charles Hall, and Robert Peary—The Coldest Crucible reveals why the North Pole, a region so geographically removed from Americans, became an iconic destination for discovery.

This is the first major collection in English of August Strindberg's letters, the most vital and wide-ranging body of correspondence in Scandinavian literature. Of ten thousand surviving letters, Michael Robinson has selected and translated more than five hundred of the most important, which trace Strindberg's development and provide a comprehensive view of the life and work of this towering figure in European literary and theatrical Modernism.

Strindberg's plays, novels, and short stories, which influenced film and theatre artists from Artaud and the German Expressionists to Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen, chart an artistic evolution from Naturalism to the revolt against realism that issued in Expressionist drama. These letters help to explain Strindberg's seminal force and testify to the broad range of his interests, energies, and imaginative instincts. An essential part of their author's oeuvre, the letters provide invaluable insight into Strindberg the artist, the political thinker, and the person, and were regarded by Strindberg himself as an integral component of his autobiographical project.

The letters, some of them published here for the first time, have been meticulously edited and are supported by an extensive introduction and notes.

This is the first major collection in English of August Strindberg's letters, the most vital and wide-ranging body of correspondence in Scandinavian literature. Of ten thousand surviving letters, Michael Robinson has selected and translated more than five hundred of the most important, which trace Strindberg's development and provide a comprehensive view of the life and work of this towering figure in European literary and theatrical Modernism.

This is the first major collection in English of August Strindberg's letters, the most vital and wide-ranging body of correspondence in Scandinavian literature. Of ten thousand surviving letters, Michael Robinson has selected and translated more than five hundred of the most important, which trace Strindberg's development and provide a comprehensive view of the life and work of this towering figure in European literary and theatrical Modernism.