Staff Pick
There’s something awe-inspiring about the bravery and egoism of 15th- and 16th-century polar explorers. To set off in wooden ships with maps that were half cartographical error and half illustrations of sea monsters remains the height of adventure; that these sailors fought scurvy, icebergs, polar bears, and each other in the name of global hegemony and supply competition is harder to valorize but no less riveting. In Icebound, journalist Andrea Pitzer tells the story of a Dutch expedition I’d never heard of: William Barents’s three journeys to the Arctic in search of a proprietary trade route to China. Only the first expedition was successful, but the third was disastrous, forcing the stranded crew to winter in a cabin (built from their boat!) while polar bears paced outside. With mutiny, hypothermia, frostbite, and bear attacks, Icebound reads like a Patrick O’Brien novel, but with the added benefits of Pitzer’s detailed accounts of contemporary geopolitics and what it’s like to survive an Arctic winter wholly unprepared (spoiler: it’s awful). This is the perfect new book for fans of narrative history and adventure stories, as well as all of us musing on the history and unraveling present of the global supply chain. Recommended By Rhianna W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
In the bestselling tradition of Hampton Sides's In the Kingdom of Ice, a "gripping adventure tale" (The Boston Globe) recounting Dutch polar explorer William Barents' three harrowing Arctic expeditions — the last of which resulted in a relentlessly challenging year-long fight for survival.
The human story has always been one of perseverance — often against remarkable odds. The most astonishing survival tale of all might be that of 16th-century Dutch explorer William Barents and his crew of sixteen, who ventured farther north than any Europeans before and, on their third polar exploration, lost their ship off the frozen coast of Nova Zembla to unforgiving ice. The men would spend the next year fighting off ravenous polar bears, gnawing hunger, and endless winter.
In Icebound, Andrea Pitzer masterfully combines a gripping tale of survival with a sweeping history of the great Age of Exploration--a time of hope, adventure, and seemingly unlimited geographic frontiers. At the story's center is William Barents, one of the 16th century's greatest navigators whose larger-than-life ambitions and obsessive quest to chart a path through the deepest, most remote regions of the Arctic ended in both tragedy and glory. Journalist Pitzer did extensive research, learning how to use four-hundred-year-old navigation equipment, setting out on three Arctic expeditions to retrace Barents's steps, and visiting replicas of Barents's ship and cabin.
"A resonant meditation on human ingenuity, resilience, and hope" (The New Yorker), Pitzer's reenactment of Barents's ill-fated journey shows us how the human body can function at twenty degrees below, the history of mutiny, the art of celestial navigation, and the intricacies of building shelters. But above all, it gives us a firsthand glimpse into the true nature of courage.
Review
"The expedition's highlight reel included everything a polar fan could want: hand-to-hand combat with polar bears and walruses; scurvy and vitamin A poisoning; asphyxiation by carbon dioxide; frostbite, keelhauling and hangings; plus the sighting of a rare atmospheric optical phenomenon called a parhelion...Pitzer writes with care about the Arctic landscape Barents encountered...A reminder that there was once a time when things were unknown."
New York Times Book Review
Review
"Richly descriptive...The real grip of the book lies in the horrendous dangers and hardships endured by Barents and his shipmates, and the determination with which they met them... For these explorers, it was as if they had visited another planet, a hostile place of alien creatures and otherworldly horrors." Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
"Andrea Pitzer does a fine job of telling this gripping adventure, painting a convincing portrait of an obsessive who put his life on the line for glory and knowledge — and succumbed." The Observer (UK)
About the Author
Andrea Pitzer is a journalist whose writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, Outside, The Daily Beast, Vox, and Slate, among other publications. She has authored two previous books, One Long Night and The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov — both critically acclaimed. She received an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1994, and later studied at MIT and Harvard as an affiliate of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism. She grew up in West Virginia and currently lives with her family near Washington, DC. Icebound is her most recent work.