- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
The North Pole has long held surprising importance for many of the world's cultures. Interweaving science and history, this book offers the first unified vision of how the North Pole has shaped everything from literature to the goals of political leadersâfrom Alexander the Great to neo-Hindu nationalists. Tracing the intersecting notions of poles, polarity, and the sacredfrom our most ancient civilizations to the present day, Michael Bravo explores how the idea of a North Pole has given rise to utopias, satires, fantasies, paradoxes, and nationalist ideologies across every era, from the Renaissance to the Third Reich.The Victorian conceit of the polar regions as a vast empty wildernessâa bastion of adventurous white males battling against the elementsâis far from the only polar vision. Bravo paints a variety of alternative pictures: of a habitable Arctic crisscrossed by densely connected networks of Inuit trade and travel routes, a world rich in indigenous cultural meanings; of a sacred paradise or lost Eden among both Western and Eastern cultures, a vision that curiously (and conveniently) dovetailed with the imperial aspirations of Europe and the United States; and as the setting for tales not only of conquest and redemption, but also of failure and catastrophe. And as we face warming temperatures, melting ice, and rising seas, Bravo argues, only an understanding of the North Pole's deeper history, of our conception of it as both a sacred and living place, can help humanity face its twenty-first-century predicament.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Table of contents
- Front Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright
- CONTENTS
- Preface
- 1 The Upward Gaze
- 2 Holding the North Pole
- 3 The Multiplication of Poles
- 4 Polar Voyaging
- 5 Polar Edens
- 6 Sovereigns of the Pole
- 7 Mourning Antaeus
- REFERENCES
- SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- INDEX