Adventures in Polar Reading – The Book Cultures of High Latitudes

Borrowing from his naval experience and his expertise as a historian, David Stam performed extensive archival and secondary research for this study of the printed needs of several polar expeditions, including those of Adolphus Greely in the International Polar Year 1881–83 in northernmost Canada. Stam analyzes shipboard- and expedition-based periodicals throughout the so-called Heroic Age of exploration (ca. 1880–1921), as well as the enduring books of Ernest Shackleton’s legendary journey aboard the Endurance. In parallel, he examines the primarily religious literature distributed as Loan Libraries of the American Seamen’s Friend Society, including a description of the three libraries assembled by Richard Evelyn Byrd for the successive bases at Little America (1929–41). Stam concludes with suggestions for further research.