As the climate changes and polar ice caps shrink dramatically, author and environmental historian Griffiths (Forests of Ash
) provides essential background for understanding how we reached the current state of meltdown. Griffiths weaves journal entries from his own voyage to Australia's Antarctic stations in 2002–2003 with extended chapters on the history of human exploration in Antarctica. His description and analysis of the polar experience is clear and comprehensive: he knows the rough seas, the storms, the desolation, the strange lack of green, the physical disruption of body rhythms and the psychological distress, and makes vivid use of that knowledge in his accounts of past explorers (Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, Douglas Mawson, Richard Byrd and many others). As an Australian, Griffiths looks European colonial misdeeds head-on, but he also analyzes forthrightly the Australian government's claims on and behavior toward Antarctica. A jumpy style can be difficult to follow at first, but soon Griffiths's many angles of pursuit—the effects of solitude, the experience of overwintering, the struggle for survival, the biology and behavior of penguins, etc.—come together in an engrossing and highly satisfying pastiche. A fine and informative ecological adventure, Griffiths' history is worth reading and rereading. (Oct.)
