1912: The Year the World Discovered Antarctica

Oct 17, 2024 7:32 AM

Author:Chris Turney,James Millar

1912 was an incredible year, marking the height of the Heroic Age of Exploration. Curiosity about Antarctica was at fever pitch, and between 1910 and 1914 five teams of intrepid explorers embarked on the greatest race of the era, to travel beyond the edges of the known world and conquer this last great frontier.

Pitted against each other were Captain Robert Falcon Scott for Britain, Roald Amundsen for Norway, Sir Douglas Mawson for Australasia, Wilhelm Filchner for Germany and Nobu Shirase for Japan. 'Conquest of the South Pole!' trumpeted the world's newspapers in March 1912. Amundsen had won. But behind all the headlines, there was a much bigger story.

The exploits of these larger-than-life explorers, often narrated in their own words, thrilled and enthralled the world; the limits of our planet were pushed all the way to the South Pole and the door to Antarctica flung wide open. Drawing on his own polar experiences, Chris Turney reveals why 1912 witnessed the dawn of a new age in our understanding of the natural world. The tales of endurance, self-sacrifice and technological innovation that marked 1912 laid the foundation for modern scientific exploration and have continued to inspire future generations.

1912 is an awe-inspiring journey - part nail-biting adventure, part scientific history - through an ancient and fascinating land.

Includes a PDF of photographs from these Antarctic expeditions.

Reviews

An instant true crime classic. Grips from the first page to the last

—— David Peace, author of Red Riding and The Damned United

Fascinating and irresistible. I couldn't put it down

—— John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Written in the style of a gripping murder mystery, but all the facts are true

—— Kirsty Lang , BBC Radio 4 (Book of the Week)

Engrossing true crime whodunnit... A terrific read

—— Andrew Holgate , Sunday Times

Not only does Mr French succeed in solving the crime, he resurrects a period that was filled with glitter as well as evil

—— The Economist

French has an easygoing prose style... well chosen quotes bring a new vigour and crispness... [He] succeeds in giving voice to a tragic quest for justice

—— Sunday Telegraph

It is the storytelling flair that marks Midnight in Peking so highly above the run-of-the-mill true crime stories: with its false leads and twists, it sucks the reader in like the best fiction

—— The Scotsman

The shocking true tale, combined with prose you can't drag yourself away from, makes Midnight in Peking a work of non fiction as compulsive as any bestselling crime novel. It also brings justice at last for a young woman whose murder nearly went unsolved

—— Sunday Express

Terrific, engrossing ... a gruesome tale of a hitherto forgotten case, and of the sheer tenacity of a grieving father

—— Caroline Sanderson , The Bookseller

It wasn't all sweetness and light between Maggie and Ronnie, as this account of their difficult relationship shows

—— Summer reading pick from THe Sunday Times

Pankaj Mishra has produced a riveting account that makes new and illuminating connections. He follows the intellectual trail of this contested history with both intelligence and moral clarity. In the end we realise that what we are holding in our hands is not only a deeply entertaining and deeply humane book, but a balance sheet of the nature and mentality of colonisation

—— Hisham Matar

Highly readable and illuminating ... Mishra's analysis of Muslim reactions is particularly topical

—— David Goodall , Tablet

Enormously ambitious but thoroughly readable, this book is essential reading for everyone who is interested in the processes of change that have led to the emergence of today's Asia

—— Amitav Ghosh , Wall Street Journal

Sophisticated ... not so much polemic as cri de coeur, motivated by Mishra's keen sense of the world, East and West, hurtling towards its own destruction

—— Tehelka, New Delhi

Outstanding ... Mishra wears his scholarship lightly and weaves together the many strands of history into a gripping narrative ... The insights afforded by this book are too many to be enumerated ... Mishra performs a signal service to the future - by making us read the past in a fresh light

—— The Hindu, New Delhi

[Full of] complexity and nuance

—— Mail Today

Subtle, erudite and entertaining

—— Financial Express

Mishra allows the reader to see the events of two centuries anew, through the eyes of the journalists, poets, radicals and charismatics who criss-crossed Europe and Asia

—— Free Press Journal

A vital, nuanced argument ... prodigious

—— Mint

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