Research Catalog

Title

Cold : extreme adventures at the lowest temperatures on Earth / Ranulph Fiennes.

Author

Fiennes, Ranulph, Sir, 1944-

Publication

London : Simon & Schuster, 2013.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

324 pages; 24 cm

Summary

Few humans have evolved who can survive and thrive in the bitter cold. Below a certain temperature, death is inevitable. This book is about this aspect of our environment and about Sir Ranulph Fiennes' own life experiencing the extreme cold, from his adventuring apprenticeship 40 years ago on the Greenland Ice Cap to masterminding over the past 5 years the crossing of the Antarctic during winter; the 'coldest journey on Earth', where temperatures will regularly plummet to minus 92 * C. Cold has altered history on many great occasions. Hannibal crossed the high Alps under conditions of extreme cold; soldiers of the mighty armies of Hitler and Napoleon died in their thousands on the frozen Russian steppes from frostbite gangrene. In the past 150 years men and women have also seen the cold as a natural challenge as adventurers and explorers from all over the world have attempted to conquer the coldest regions of the globe. Today, parts of the world subject to extreme cold are the focus of intense geopolitical pressure, as President Putin claims Arctic coastal waters to be Russian, in readiness for the predicted melting of sea-ice, sending submarines to plant Russian flags on the seabed as a warning to would-be non-Russian mineral prospectors, and similar claims are made on the Antarctic. And yet a few degrees of climate change in Antarctica could easily trigger the detachment of huge ice sheets which would slide into the Southern Ocean.

Subject

• Antarktis
• Arctic regions > British
• Arktis
• Climatic changes
• Cold > Physiological effect
• Cold regions > Discovery and exploration
• Fiennes Ranulph > Travel > Arctic regions
• Human ecology > History
• Kälte
• Travel and Tourism

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

• 1471127826 (cloth)
• 9781471127823 (cloth)

OCLC

858009006

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library