[close] Tristan Jones described by Time magazine as "someone Lindbergh would have understood," wanted to sail a boat farther north that anyone else would ever attempt. Accompanied by Nelson, a one-eyed, three-legged Labrador, he set out from Iceland in the summer of 1959.

The first winter he holed up in a Greenland fiord. Trapped by violent snowstorms, he nearly died. But he kept moving north, and by the second winter was solidly joined to an ice pack in the Arctic Ocean. For 366 days all he could do was hope the ice pack would drift far enough north for the record.

His only certainty was the terrible ice, which finally won by crushing his boat. How could he and Nelson survive? But they did, and it makes us glad that intrepid men still live and write so the rest of us can share their remarkable adventures, of which this is certainly one. [close]