Mammoth Book of Polar Journeys

To explore the white stuff you always need the right stuff. We see Oates stepping outside, Byrd locked out of his hut in a blizzard, Peary losing his toes to frostbite, but forcing his weary limbs through the snow as the mercury dropped.

It was more than physical courage. Such extremes reveal what is inside too. 'We had reached the naked soul of man,' Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton recounted after his epic expedition south.

Fifty first-hand accounts of intrepid travel through the wild polar wastelands form Sir John Franklin’s starvation march through Alaska in 1821 to Vassilli Gorshkovsky’s trip aboard a creaking Russian icebreaker.

Jon E. Lewis is the editor of several Mammoths, including The Mammoth Book of The Edge, The Mammoth Book of Endurance and Adventure, and The Mammoth Book of Wild Journeys.