The book's 24 chapters mainly chronicle the role of sledge dogs during different Arctic expeditions (from
Elisha Kent Kane's Second Grinnell Expedition of 1853-55 to Robert E.
of Alberta, Canada, provide a catalog to go with an exhibition held there from May to August 2008 that details 59 books and maps published from 1565 to 1983 by Arctic explorers such as James Cook, George Vancouver, John Franklin, William Edward Parry, George Back,
Elisha Kent Kane, and William Gilkerson.
He has received conflicting reports about the nature of the Arctic: Meader found the Arctic magical a pulsating realm of light and life while explorers like
Elisha Kent Kane declared it quite simply Horrible!
In his generous, insightful review of my book, Race to the Polar Sea: The Heroic Adventures of
Elisha Kent Kane, Mark Lovewell poses questions that reflect a serious engagement with the work.
While science initially played a dominant role in
Elisha Kent Kane's attempts to reach an "open polar sea" around mid-century, by the time Cook and Peary took to the stage 50 years later, the factors that had once motivated American forays into the Arctic had ceased to exert any influence at all.
Nancy Rubin Stuart's book is the latest, but the previous year saw the publication of Barbara Weisberg's Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism and David Chapin's Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox,
Elisha Kent Kane, and the Antebellum Culture of Curiosity.
In the latter capacity he organized the Perry expedition to Japan and
Elisha Kent Kane's second Arctic expedition.
From that time on, he became not only my friend but my mentor, and we worked together on various projects dealing with the "Arctic of the Imagination." One such collaboration was an illustrated edition of
Elisha Kent Kane's Arctic Explorations for R.R.
Raising Kane;
Elisha Kent Kane and the culture of fame in antebellum America.
Race to the Polar Sea: The Heroic Adventures of
Elisha Kent Kane shifts us to more conventional literary territory--the latest instalment in Ken McGoogan's string of exploration biographies, this one again showing his meticulous research, robust prose and keen psychological insight, focused on the American adventurer
Elisha Kent Kane.
Born in Philadelphia on 3 February 1820,
Elisha Kent Kane died in Havana, Cuba, on 16 February 1857, at the young age of 37.
Malaurie pays tribute to American explorer
Elisha Kent Kane, who negotiated "extraordinary agreements" with the Inuit: "After 130 years, the favorable memory that Kane has left among my Eskimo friends is vague, certainly, but tenacious." And he reflects astutely on Adolphus Greely, who led a disastrous expedition along the east coast of Ellesmere Island, and did not attempt to cross Kane Basin to where the Inuit lived: "is it not possible that Lieutenant Greely ...