Last Explorer: Hubert Wilkins, Hero of the Golden Age of Polar Exploration

by Simon Nasht

Overview

In the tradition of The Ice Master and Endurance, here is the incredible story of the first truly modern explorer, whose death-defying adventures and uncommon modesty make this book itself an extraordinary discovery. Hubert Wilkins was the most successful explorer in history—no one saw with his own eyes more undiscovered land and sea. Largely self-taught, Wilkins became a celebrated newsreel cameraman in the early 1900s, as well as a reporter, pilot, spy, war hero, scientist, and adventurer, capturing in his lens war and famine, cheating death repeatedly, meeting world leaders like Lenin and Stalin, and circling the globe on a zeppelin. 

Apprenticing with the greats of polar exploration, including Shackleton in the Antarctic, Wilkins recognized the importance of new technologies such as the airplane and submarine. He helped map the Canadian Arctic and plumbed the ocean depths from the icecap. A pioneer in the truest sense of the word, he became the first man to fly across the North Pole, which won him a knighthood; the first to fly to the Antarctic and discover land there by airplane; and the first to take a submarine under the Arctic ice. Grasping the link between the poles and changing global weather, Wilkins was a visionary in weather forecasting and the study of global warming. A true hero of the earth, he changed the way we look at our world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628732641
Publisher:	Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date:	11/11/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	141,092
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Simon Nasht is an Australian-born writer, journalist, and filmmaker.
He has worked all over the world, lived in half a dozen countries, and reported for leading newspapers and TV networks everywhere. His acclaimed documentaries have been shown by the
BBC, ABC, the National Geographic channel, and PBS. He lives in Australia.

Table of Contents

Maps x

Introduction xiii

Prologue xvii

1 In the Blood 1

2 True Adventure Thrills 14

3 An Adventurer's Apprenticeship 32

4 The Mad Photographers 50

5 A Man Apart 63

6 The Great Race 76

7 Unsuccessfully South 93

8 Drought Lands 110

9 Undiscovered Australia 110

10 Ultima Thule 137

11 Over the Top 160

12 Around the World in Twenty-one Days 186

13 The Suicide Club 211

14 The Voyage of the Nautilus 227

15 King of the Antarctic 255

16 Restless Years 274

17 Ninety Degrees North, August 3, 1958 291

18 The Final Journey, March 17, 1959 306

Epilogue: The Weatherman 309

Notes 317

Bibliography 336

Index 338