In this engrossing chronicle of arctic exploration, Brandt (Reality Police: The Experience of Insanity in America
) follows the many expeditions launched by the British navy in the 19th century to find a sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the maze of islands north of the Canadian mainland. He treats the story as an exercise in majestic futility: ship after ship became trapped in the region's labyrinthine, perpetually ice-clogged waters, dispatched by naval officials who believed that the Arctic Ocean was ice-free beyond its frozen rim. Sailors braved immense ice floes that squeezed and crushed their ships; summer overland treks featured mosquito swarms that blotted out the sun; everyone faced the likelihood of frostbite, scurvy, and starvation. Brandt pens a colorful narrative full of gothic horrors, quiet daring, and petty personality clashes, and probes the social meaning of these odysseys: to the explorers and the public that idolized them, the tacit point, he suggests, was to court danger as a proof of British grit and resolve. The result is a gripping—and sometimes appalling—tale of heroism and hubris. (Mar.)
