BOOK OF THE MONTH: DECEMBER 2011

                                                                                    
Title           : The Roof at the Bottom of the World: 

                   Discovering the Transantarctic Mountains

Author       : Edmund Stump

Publisher    : Yale University Press

Pages         : 272

ISBN         : 10: 0300171978

Price           : $29.95

Published on: October 24, 2011

2011 is the 100^th anniversary of Roald Amundsen reaching the South Pole. And here is a book that presents a historical account of his achievement: The Roof at the Bottom of the World: Discovering the Transantarctic Mountains. As expeditions pushed deeper into the interior, the Transantarctic Mountains unfolded before them as a great, linear fortress of rock, dividing the East Antarctic Ice Sheet from the Ross Sea, Ross Ice Shelf, and West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The Transantarctic Mountains are the most remote mountain belt on Earth, an utterly pristine wilderness of ice and rock rising to majestic heights and extending for 1,500 miles. The Roof at the Bottom of the World: Discovering the Transantarctic Mountains comprehensively documents the 1,500-mile length of the Transantarctic Mountains. It is the first atlas of the most remote mountain range on Earth. 

The presentation style of the book  is historical, following a narrative of the voyages and traverses of those parties that were first to behold new lands. The stories of the discovery and exploration of the Transantarctic Mountains span a century and a half of valiant enterprise, from the days of wooden sailing ships and the first sighting by Ross in 1841, through the Heroic era when Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen vied to be the first to reach the South Pole, to the airborne exploits of  Byrd in the 1930’s, to the birth of modern Antarctic programs.

Through the use of annotated photos and shaded-relief maps, the book plots the routes taken by the early expeditions, enabling the armchair explorer to visualize the trails blazed by those who bore first witness to these wonders beyond the icy sea. The book also reproduces original maps from the explorers, showing how they perceived their discoveries, and in some cases, how limited was their view. Compare the three figures that follow.

In this book, Edmund Stump is the first to show us this continental-scale mountain system in all its stunning beauty and desolation, and the first to provide a comprehensive, fully illustrated history of the region's discovery and exploration. The author not only has conducted extensive research in the Transantarctic Mountains during his forty-year career as a geologist but has also systematically photographed the entire region. Selecting the best of the best of his more than 8,000 photographs, he presents nothing less than the first atlas of these mountains.

In addition, he examines the original firsthand accounts of the heroic Antarctic explorations of James Clark Ross (who discovered the mountain range in the early 1840s), Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, Richard Byrd, and scientists participating in the International Geophysical Year (1957–1958). From these records, Stump is now able to trace the actual routes of the early explorers with unprecedented accuracy. With maps old and new, stunning photographs never before published, and tales of intrepid explorers, this book takes the armchair traveler on an expedition to the Antarctic wilderness that few have ever seen.

Edmund Stump is professor of exploration at Arizona State University. He is also a geologist, polar explorer, mountaineer, and photographer specializing in the geology of the Transantarctic Mountains. He has served as principal investigator or chief scientist on many scientific field trips to Antarctica, most recently a 2010–2011 National Science Foundation expedition to the Beardmore Glacier area. He lives in Tempe, AZ.

Courtesy: http://www.transantarcticmountains.com, http://yalepress.yale.edu, www.amazon.com