How Did We Find Out About Antarctica

How Did We Find Out #16

by Isaac Asimov

Describes the geography of the Antarctic regions and the history of their discovery and exploration.

64 pages, Library Binding

First published November 1, 1979

About the author

Works of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles, The Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.

Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.

Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).

People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.

Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.

Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...

Reviews

[Omidetunam]

برای دوستانی که میخوان آیلتس بدن خوندن کتابای آسیموف واسه تقویت ریدینگ توصیه میشه :دی

[Ali]

A great book explaining how we reached Antarctica, after whom the different parts of Antarctica was named, difficulties of sailing on icy lands, lack of food suplies, the explorers who's lost their lives in the quest, different kinds of living species including Adeline Penguins and Emperor Penguins, how their chicks are hatched and bred and etc... a short and informative book recommend to everyone who likes to get to know Antarctica better. 👍

[Rena Sherwood]

This is a review of the library bound 1979 edition, which can currently be found at the Internet Archive. The print is large and the margins wide, with plenty of white space, so the book is actually much shorter than it first appears. It's an easy to read chapter book for kids or beginning English readers.

Although Asimov was best known for his fiction, he wrote a lot of non-fiction, including a long series for elementary school kids called How Did We Find Out About. Kids might be sorry they asked when presented a book as an answer, but Asimov could write well for kids. He also included how to pronounce unusual names or vocabulary words like "latitude".

Most of the book consists of synopsis of European sea voyages South of the equator. This seemed to be unnecessarily long. Did we really need to know about the discoveries of New Zealand and Australia in a book about Antarctica?

After Antarctica was discovered, then there are synopsis of expeditions to the South Pole. This all gets a bit tedious, even for such a short book.

There's only one chapter about Antarctica itself, and some of the animals in the seas or colonies that live there part of the year. The animal gone into the most is the Emperor penguin.

Of course, some of this book is out of date.

Illustrator David Wool did an excellent job, using ink wash paintings.

[Amir]

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