Rating: 
Summary: Good, but long
Review: This book was very thorough, very interesting, very long. Over 600 pages? If you don't have time to read it all (I read about 2/3rds) you might say it was TOO THOROUGH! The explorers tend to keep making the same mistakes. Too arrogant to learn from the Eskimos, too proud, too much influenced by British politics and belief in their own cultural SUPERIORITY. Because of the recurring themes, I sometimes found it hard to remember who did what to whom and when. I'd still like to be able to finish this book when I get the time, but I got the gist of it. (Maybe in retirement?)
Rating:
Summary: Good, but long
Review: This book was very thorough, very interesting, very long. Over 600 pages? If you don't have time to read it all (I read about 2/3rds) you might say it was TOO THOROUGH! The explorers tend to keep making the same mistakes. Too arrogant to learn from the Eskimos, too proud, too much influenced by British politics and belief in their own cultural SUPERIORITY. Because of the recurring themes, I sometimes found it hard to remember who did what to whom and when. I'd still like to be able to finish this book when I get the time, but I got the gist of it. (Maybe in retirement?)
Rating: 
Summary: Vale Pierre Berton
Review: This excellent book, first published in 1988, stands as a fitting memorial to the prolific and accomplished writer Pierre Berton, who passed away at age 84 as recently as November 31, 2004. It details the events and personalities of Arctic exploration over nearly a century, beginning in 1818 with the first British naval expedition of John Ross and Edward Parry, and the related disastrous first naval land expedition led by the oddly ineffectual John Franklin. It concludes with the strange twentieth century tales of Robert Peary and Frederick Cook, both of whom claimed to have reached the North Pole, though neither could prove actually to have done so (nor had they). Along the way we meet a host of players, including the indomitable Lady Jane Franklin, Admiralty puppeteer John Barrow, the underestimated arctic masters Edward Penny and John Rae; Robert McClure, M'Clintock, Charles Francis Hall, Sabine, Nares, Greely, Elisha Kent Kane, Nansen, Amundsen, a number of memorable Inuit personalities and a host of others.
The great strength of this account is the repeated demonstration that the outcome of almost every event in the drama depended ultimately on the characters and personalities of the major players, their strengths, weaknesses, flaws and ambitions, and their capacities to learn from the experiences of their predecessors and their Inuit contacts. This gives a Shakespearian, if not biblical, dimension to the history, which is ably exploited by Berton. The book is as much about explorers as exploration.
Berton's well-detailed sources include the numerous accounts of the explorers themselves, their biographers and ghost writers, and much archival material - letters, original field notes, official reports etc, all woven together in a skilful and compelling synopsis. The book can be heartily recommended!
A few matters are missed among the vast number of items covered, for example James Cook in HMS Discovery, shortly before his death in Hawaii, reached Barrow Point, Alaska, from Bering Strait in 1780, setting the target for Franklin and others exploring from the east. One would like to have read the story of the Oval Office "Resolute desk", donated to the American Presidency by Queen Victoria in 1880, and constructed from timber salvaged from HMS Resolute, a ship mentioned frequently by Berton. The icebound Resolute was abandoned at Bathurst Island, Melville Sound by the British in 1854. She released the following summer and was later found adrift in Baffin Bay by a US whaler, sold on to the US government, refitted and returned to the British with a gorgeously attired naval band, much panoply and splendid one-upmanship. Also that Amundsen eventually disappeared in the arctic in 1928 while on an aerial search for the wonderfully zany General Umberto Nobile and his downed dirigible Italia (watch those late-night movie listings for the excellent film Red Tent (Krashnaya palatka), in which Peter Finch plays Nobile and Sean Connery Amundsen). Most of all perhaps, that the first expatriate to fully traverse the north west passage (on McClure's Investigator to Banks Island in the west and Intrepid from Barrow Strait in the east, with much walking and sledging between the two) was Lieut. Samuel Gurney Cresswell, in 1853 (he departed for Britain ahead of the other former Investigator crewmen with the news that McClure and his men had traversed the elusive passage).
Many original works of relevance have appeared in recent years. Notable are the excellent commentaries and reprints of the first Franklin expedition journals and paintings of John Richardson, George Back and Robert Hood edited by C. Stuart Houston (Arctic Ordeal, Arctic Artist and To the Arctic by Canoe), and David C. Woodman's studies on the Inuit memories of Franklin and his lost crews (Unravelling the Franklin Mystery - Inuit Testimony and Strangers Among Us ( all published by McGill Queens UP). Also the hard-to-find and indispensable arctic chronology of Alan Cooke and Clive Holland (The Exploration of Northern Canada - Arctic History Press), a first version of which was used by Berton. Many others are well covered in Amazon.com documentation.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling, captivating, spellbinding -- and true!
Review: This is (IMHO) one of the finest books ever written about arctic exploration (and I've read dozens). Berton is a superb writer, an unmatched storyteller, and a gifted chronicler of much-too-neglected aspect of recent history. The men and women of arctic exploration come alive under the author's perceptive pen, and before you know it you caught up in the world of Parry, Ross, Franklin, Back, Simpson, Amundsen, Cook, Peary, and host of lesser-known but intriguing characters. If you have a heart for history and the people that influenced it, you won't be able to put this book down! An added bonus is the respect with which the author treats the arctic native peoples, without whose help and support every kabloona (white man) who ever set foot into the arctic would have died tragically. I've read this book three times, and am looking forward to my fourth journey into the world of "The Arctic Grail."
Rating:
Summary: Definitely well-researched, warts-and-all
Review: This is a great, all-encompassing view of Arctic exploration from 1818-1909. It is a book about explorers as much as exploration, and about the people behind the scenes, such as Lady Franklin, the people who funded the expeditions, the politicians. Berton tells their stories warts and all; the heroism and sacrifice, the back stabbing and human failings and weaknesses. All of this makes the explorers, even the heroes, seem more human. I liked the parts about the early British Naval explorers--Franklin, the Rosses, Parry. They refused to learn anything from the 'uncivilized' Eskimoes who were obviously living off the land and sea; they refused to learn from the whalers who had been sailing the Arctic for decades, they refused to learn from the fur traders and voyageurs who had been living in this hostile land. The Navy insisted on going in with large crews with tons of provisions. They could not pick up on even simple things, such as eating blubber could stave off scurvy, which should have been evident as the Eskimoes never suffered from this disease. Some of the anecdotes of the officers trying to make the natives understand their 'civilized' ways are hilarious. This book is filled with both heroism and tragedy, neither of which were in short supply in the quest for the North Pole and the Northwest Passage. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: An Informative account
Review: This is one of the few books detailing the entire quest for the Northwest passage and North Pole, a quest which spanned almost a century. Beginning in 1818 after the end of the Napoleonic wars the oversized British Navy was sent on trips to ferret out the Northwest passage. The original man responsible for this was Mr. Barrow at the Admiralty. This portion of the books mirrors and serves as the backbone for Fergus Flemings `Barrows Boys' which is a similar excellent account.This fantastic volume goes onto describe Amundsons navigation of the passage and the mapping of the northwest territories as well as bear Lake and Slave Lake. The final chapters sum up the quest for the North Pole and the expeditions from all sides that set out to conquer the top of the world. Nansans voyage from northern Norway is detailed very well. This is an excellent account and if you can find this book it is a very good read, full of adventure, suspense and containing many good maps of each voyage.
Rating:
Summary: An Informative account
Review: This is one of the few books detailing the entire quest for the Northwest passage and North Pole, a quest which spanned almost a century. Beginning in 1818 after the end of the Napoleonic wars the oversized British Navy was sent on trips to ferret out the Northwest passage. The original man responsible for this was Mr. Barrow at the Admiralty. This portion of the books mirrors and serves as the backbone for Fergus Flemings 'Barrows Boys' which is a similar excellent account. This fantastic volume goes onto describe Amundsons navigation of the passage and the mapping of the northwest territories as well as bear Lake and Slave Lake. The final chapters sum up the quest for the North Pole and the expeditions from all sides that set out to conquer the top of the world. Nansans voyage from northern Norway is detailed very well. This is an excellent account and if you can find this book it is a very good read, full of adventure, suspense and containing many good maps of each voyage.
Rating:
Summary: Would like to hear the Eskimos take on these events!
Review: Years ago I had read an article about the discovery and autopsy of the remains of three seamen from the Franklin expedition. I was so taken by the arctic story recapitulated for that article that when I discovered Ice Blink I read it greedily, becoming a fan of arctic exploration. That find lead me to the current book, The Arctic Grail by Canadian historian Pierre Berton. In reading Berton's book, one can hardly fail to notice the fact that most of the search for the Northwest Passage, which occupied many adventurous souls for the better part of the 19th Century, was conducted: 1) by Franklin expeditions, 2) in search of survivors of the last Franklin expedition, 3) in search of information as to the fate of the members of the last Franklin expedition, and 4) in search of relics and journals that might come from the last Franklin expedition. It also becomes apparent that almost every venture into that frozen land led to tragedy and often death. It seems that very little was learned either through the experiences of the survivors of the various expeditions or from the lifestyle of the natives of the area. One is amazed that after the disasters that followed each undertaking, yet another venture would be proposed, despite the loss of life and the evident uselessness of the pass itself. Each expedition met with nightmarish experiences, many of the men dying of starvation and exposure, and while the officers might receive promotion in rank and recognition in the history books for their discoveries, the enlisted men who did most of the work got little more than an increase in pay if they lived to get it. Of the rush to the North Pole, all that can be honestly said is that the notoriety of superhuman effort and of the attainment of nearly impossible goals inspired some pretty disgraceful behavior on behalf of a number of, particularly American, explorers. It becomes obvious that the chicanery of ambitious men looking to make a fortune as celebrities did not start in the last half of the 20th century. Both Cook and Peary seemed driven men whose egos could sustain the possible blight of fraudulent claims disputed by the records but not of public failure. What is sad, particularly in the latter case, is that the actual attainments of the discoverer were pretty amazing as it was. No one since has achieved quite so much under the same conditions. While others have been to the pole successfully, it required air dropped supplies and a flight in or out of the area. Throughout the entire book one is confronted with a sense of a major lack of real respect for nature by so-called civilized man. It is tempting to see this attitude as a peculiarly 20th (now 21st) century phenomenon, but it seems to have had a good start in the 19th century. The hubris that makes modern man feel that he can tame nature with his various gadgets may just be part and parcel of human nature. Maybe it's just wishful thinking. One of the particularly distressing aspects of the explorers accounts is of the callous treatment of the native population and of the total marginalization of their contributions. It's apparent from Berton's book that the safe return of many explorers was due largely to help from the Eskimos. I think a thorough narrative of Arctic exploration from their point of view-both their own conquest of the area and their take on the European and American explorations-might make very interesting reading indeed! All in all the book is well written and well researched. It would definitely appeal to anyone with an interest in history, in man against nature, in man in nature, in geography, ethnography, and 19th Century culture. Anyone with a reading level of 6th grade or above should be able to comprehend it, and it might make interesting reading especially for young men.
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