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| FEATURED BOOK for April, 2001 |
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| DISASTER AT THE POLE |
| The Tragedy of the Airship Italia and the 1928 Nobile Expedition to the North Pole |
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| by Wilbur Cross |
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| 316 pages |
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| Published by The Lyons Press |
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| ISBN: 1585740497 September 2000 |
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| Hardcover (9.25 x 6.30) |
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| List price: US$19.96 |
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| From the publisher . . . "Here, in the grand tradition of Endurance and The Worst Journey in the World, is a tragic tale of a failed polar exploration. Shackleton. Scott. Amundsen. The great twentieth-century polar explorers. But others, too, were engaged in scrambles to the poles. One of the most bizarre and tragic took place in 1928. Against the backdrop of Mussolini's rising power, one of Italy's premier aeronautical engineers, Umberto Nobile, gained acclaim by crossing the North Pole in a dirigible. With this success under his belt, Nobile decided in 1928 to raise the ante and take his newly designed airship to the North Pole, land it, and then return to base. But what started in glory turned into a tale of disaster when the airship crashed some three hundred miles from civilization. |
| With over thirty years of research and interviews with surviving participants, Wilbur Cross presents this terrifying tale of tragedy and survival. Here is the story of the airship's survivors stranded on an ice floe that begins to break apart into sea. It's about an international team of rescuers' determination to find the missing Italians only to be lost themselves; the most famous to never return was Roald Amundsen. And it's about the controversy surrounding the rescue of Nobile while much of his crew perished in the icy wastelands of the Arctic. Filled with political intrigue, heroics, and cruel twists of fate, Disaster at the Pole is the fascinating story of one of the greatest polar tragedies." |
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| About the author . . . Wilbur Cross is the author of more than forty-five books. A former editor at Life magazine, he presently runs his own editorial consulting and writing firm. |
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| For additional reviews and ordering information, click on the cover image. |
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| Umberto Nobile, the pilot of the Italia and one of the more controversial figures in polar aviation history. |
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| The airship Italia in the hangar at Kings Bay, Spitsbergen, starting point for the 1928 north polar flight. This is the same hangar that was used for the 1926 Norge transpolar flight. |
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| Einar Lundborg, the Swedish pilot who removed Nobile from the ice floe where Italia survivors were stranded. When Lundborg returned for more survivors his plane was damaged and he himself had to be resucued. |
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| For Spitsbergen and additional north polar regions maps, click here. |
| For more on the Italia flight, click here. |
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| Some additional books you might enjoy . . . |
| For more information, click on the cover image. |
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| THE ICE MASTER |
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| by Jennifer Niven |
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| Featured book for December |
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| THE SVALBARD ARCHIPELAGO |
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| by P. J. Capelotti |
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| Featured book for November |
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| IN THE LAND OF THE |
| WHITE DEATH |
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| by Valerian Albanov |
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| Featured book for |
| January |
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| PolarFlight Online |
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