polar regions

In brief, this book is very good and interesting. Ms. Wheeler lived for quite a while (7 months) in the Antarctic, at various sites. Without spending too much time, she describes the history of Antarctic exploration, and the kind of characters it attracts.

Most interesting to me was her interest in the individuals she encountered there, and the effect isolation has on them. Some return time after time, which most of us would find puzzling. She explains the hold the continent has on these people.

While travelling from camp to camp, run by several nations, she also examined cultural differences, some of which are insightful...the Italian camp seemed especially "human", for example. And compare the British and American camp atmospheres.

By interspersing her reportorial observations with personal comments, she reveals something of herself, but not too much. She does not become overly familiar. Nor does the book dwell too much on the scientific minutiae of the area, as some others do. This is a good book about a very harsh place, written by a very good reporter and observer.

I'd very much like to meet this woman. How many books leave one with that feeling about an author?

This is a wonderfully woven tale of travel to Antarctica in the past and present. It's not just Scott and Shackleton, but Seismic Man (a scientist there today), told in an engaging style. Nor is it just about travel to a physical place (albeit the most extreme on earth). Wheeler also describes the inner journey that travelers to Antarctica inevitably make. Antarctica is now on my destination list. But regardless of whether I ever make it there, after reading Terra Incognita, I think I understand the lure of the ice. The maps are good as is the ending recipe for the Antarctic version of Bread-and-Butter Pudding. My only regret is that she didn't include an appendix with the chronology of early Antarctic explorations. Terra Incognita is even better than Travels in a Thin Country, Wheeler's earlier account of travel in Chile.

Sara Wheeler's journey to Antarctica began as a side trip. While researching a book on Chile, she flew to its southernmost point, King George Island, off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.
"Standing on the edge of the ice field in a wind strong enough to lean on, squinting in the buttery light, it was as if I were seeing the earth for the very first time," she writes. "I felt less homeless than I have ever felt anywhere, and I knew immediately that I had to return."
"Terra Incognita" is the story of that return. It offers a fascinating snapshot of modern day scientists who are expanding the frontiers of polar research in Antarctica, framed within an engaging and well-researched history of human adventure on this most inhospitable of continents.
Wheeler's book is filled with fascinating characters, their portraits sketched with affection and humor: the scientists, flyboys and dreamers she meets in field stations and camps; legendary explorers such as Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton, whose lives are vividly rendered through excerpts from their writings; and ultimately, the great landscape itself.
"The landscape drew my thoughts away from worldly things, away from the thousand mechanical details of my outward life," Wheeler writes of the spiritual aspects of her Antarctic sojourn. "I had found the place where, loosed from my cultural moorings, I could find the space to look for the higher power, whatever it was, that loomed over the snow fields."
By sharing her own responses to the landscape, as well as describing how other people have responded to Antarctica as a place and an idea throughout history, Wheeler has crafted a highly personal book that also educates the reader about the continent's history, geography and climate.
I would recommend this book to any reader interested in nature, science, or history, who wants to take "the last great journey" with an engaging and funny guide.