Realm of Ice and Sky

Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue by Buddy Levy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It’s fascinating that there was a time when we had yet to set foot on certain parts of the planet, like…the North Pole.

Robert Peary and Dr. Frederick Cook both had their claims. But we may never know who go there first. One just has a better claim than the other (Peary lost 8 toes…that’s got to count for something).

I read awhile back that Cook had entrusted his documentation of his feat to someone else and that Peary had somehow sabotaged that. Peary was proprietary about the North Pole and had been attempting it for years. The proof depended on journals and measurements and stuff and it was concluded that Cook probably falsified his notes and that he couldn’t have made the distances that he did in single days, or at least not the way that he described it.

Interestingly, both men had backing from rival newspapers. The New York Times backed Peary and some other paper backed Cook. So it was to their own best interests for them to support their own man’s claim.

Ultimately Peary’s claim emerged as the strongest and I find the most telling proof that Cook was an unreliable narrator of his own adventure was his behavior after being discredited…he lost his status as an explorer and his place with the National Geographic society was stripped… he ultimately founded a Ponzi scheme investment scam and he went to jail.

And then the Age of Polar Exploration gives way to the Age of Aviation Exploration.

Realm of Ice and Sky tells the roughly 30-year history of man’s attempt to reach the Pole by airship. And the man who conquered the South Pole came back to try to balloon over the North Pole. With Men like Amundsen, Nobile (backed by the fascist Mussolini) and the little remembered Walter Wellman pushing the issue…who will succeed?

That book I read about Peary/Cook ended with the grim reminder that in 100 years the North Pole will likely be underwater, and that one day this argument over who got there first will be unfathomable.




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