Product Description

This riveting biography recounts the life of the world's firsttruly modern explorer, a life of unrelenting adventure and the high dramaof polar exploration. Hubert Wilkins was the most successful explorer inhistory: no one saw with his own eyes more undiscovered land and sea.Largely self-taught, he was a celebrated reporter, pilot, spy, war hero,scientist, and adventurer. He captured in his lens war and famine, cheateddeath repeatedly, met world leaders like Lenin, Mussolini, and King GeorgeV, and circled the globe on a zeppelin. Knighted for being the first personto fly across the North Pole, Wilkins was also the first to fly in theAntarctic, discover land by airplane, and take a submarine under the Arcticice.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #370443 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From Booklist
Unlike such famous explorers as Amundsen, Peary, Scott, and Shackleton, Sir Hubert Wilkins is little known. Nasht has now brought Wilkins' exploits to readers' attention with this book. He writes that Wilkins began his exploration by sledging thousands of miles across ice and slogging for years on foot through the deserts and tropics. He was the first to grasp the potential of discovery from the air and by submarine and, in 1928, completed a map of the world in eight months of flying. In August 1931, aboard the submarine Nautilus, Wilkens and his crew were the first to dive into the Arctic Ocean. He was the first to fly across the North Pole, resulting in a knighthood; the first to fly to the Antarctic; and the first to discover land by plane. Wilkins, a scientist, was the first to understand the link between the pole and changing global weather. Anyone interested in the history of polar exploration will want to read this book. George Cohen
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