Antarctica
Last update: 18 Jan 2026 14:45First version:
An odd enthusiasm, perhaps, but my own; since it's part of my armchair-travel complex, it's not been sensibly diminished by winters in Wisconsin and Michigan. I like to imagine starlight on the ice...
- Recommended, non-fiction:
- Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World
- Evan Connell, The White Lantern [Specifically, the title chapter, later reprinted in his collection The Aztec Treasure House]
- Werner Herzog, Encounters at the End of the World [Trailer, but it's really an incredible movie]
- Adrian Howkins, Frozen Empires: An Environmental History of the Antarctic Peninsula
- Veronika Meduna, Secrets of the Ice: Antarctica's Clues to Climate, the Universe, and the Limits of Life
- Joan Myers, Wondrous Cold: An Antarctic Journey
- Edmund Stump
- Wendy Trusler and Carol Devine (with photography by Sandy Nicholson), The Antarctic Book of Cooking and Cleaning: A Polar Journey
- Norbert Wu, Under Antarctic Ice
- Recommended, fiction (very miscellaneous, and bearing in mind I have no taste):
- H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
- Douglas Preston, The Ice Limit
- Greg Rucka, Whiteout
- Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette?
- Not recommended, fiction (among many others I could name):
- Albert Sanchez Pinol, Cold Skin
- To read, non-fiction:
- Dian Olson Belanger, Deep Freeze: The United States, the International Geophysical Year, and the Origins of Antarctica's Age of Science
- Creina Bond and Roy Siegfried, Antarctica: No Single Country, No Single Sea
- Mark Bowen, The Telescope in the Ice: Inventing a New Astronomy at the South Pole [I knew a lot of these people in grad school!]
- Elizabeth Bradfield, Toward Antarctica
- David Campbell, The Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica
- Tim Carr, Antarctic Oasis: Under the Spell of South Georgia
- Jenny Diski, Skating to Antarctica: A Journey to the End of the World
- Klaus J. Dodds, Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire
- David J. Drewry, The Land Beneath the Ice: The Pioneering Years of Radar Exploration in Antarctica
- Gavin Francis, Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence and Emperor Penguins
- James Gorman, Ocean Enough and Time: Discovering the Waters Around Antarctica
- Ranulph Fiennes, The Crossing of Antarctica: Original Photographs from the Epic Journey That Fulfilled Shackleton's Dream
- Bill Green, Water, Ice and Stone: Science and Memory on the Antarctic Lakes
- Tom Griffiths, Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica
- Meredith Hooper, Palmer's Penguins and the Warming of Antarctica (= Ferocious Summer?)
- Nicholas Johnson, Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica
- Edward J. Larson, An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science
- John Long, Mountains of Madness: A Scientist's Odyssey in Antarctica
- Peter Matthiessen, End of the Earth: Voyages to Antarctica
- Craig Potton, Improbable Eden
- Stephen Pyne, The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica
- Leslie Caro Roberts, The Entire Earth and Sky: Views on Antarctica
- Ruth Slavid, Ice Station
- Francis Spufford, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination
- Gabrielle Walker, Antarctica
- Sara Wheeler, Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica
- To read, fiction:
- Paul McAuley, Austral [I'm half-way through this as I write and I'm sure I'll end up recommending it enthusiastically, but I have my rules]
- Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
- Kim Stanley Robinson, Antarctica