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The Ice Balloon audiobook
- By: Alec Wilkinson
- Narrator: John Pruden
- Category: Expeditions & Discoveries, History
- Length: 7 hours 19 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2012
- Language: English
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The Ice Balloon Audiobook Summary
In this grand and astonishing account, Alec Wilkinson brings us the story of S. A. Andrée, the visionary Swedish aeronaut who, in 1897, during the great age of Arctic endeavor, left to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon. Called by a British military officer “the most original and remarkable attempt ever made in Arctic exploration,” Andrée’s expedition was followed by nearly the entire world, and it made him an international legend. The Ice Balloon begins in the late nineteenth century, when nations—compelled by vanity, commerce, and science—competed with one another for the greatest discoveries and newspapers covered every journey. Wilkinson describes how in Andrée several contemporary themes intersected. He was the first modern explorer—the first to depart for the Arctic unencumbered by notions of the romantic age and the first to be equipped with the newest technologies—but no explorer had ever left with more uncertainty regarding his fate, since none had ever flown over the horizon and into the forbidding region of ice. In addition to portraying the period, The Ice Balloon gives us a brief history of the exploration of the northern polar regions, both myth and fact, including detailed versions of the two record-setting expeditions just prior to Andrée’s—one led by US Army lieutenant Adolphus Greely from Ellesmere Island, the other by Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer who initially sought to reach the pole by embedding his ship in the pack ice and drifting toward it with the current. Woven throughout is Andrée’s own history and how he came by his brave and singular idea. We also get to know Andrée’s family, the woman who loved him, and the two men who accompanied him—Nils Strindberg, a cousin of the famous playwright, with a tender love affair of his own, and Knut Fraenkel, a willing and hearty young man. Andrée’s flight and the journey—based on the expedition’s diaries and photographs, which were dramatically recovered thirty-three years after the balloon came down—along with Wilkinson’s research, provide a book filled with suspense and adventure, a haunting story of high ambition and courage made tangible with the detail, beauty, and devastating conditions of traveling and dwelling in “the realm of Death,” as one Arctic explorer put it.
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The Ice Balloon Audiobook Narrator
John Pruden is the narrator of The Ice Balloon audiobook that was written by Alec Wilkinson
John Pruden is a professional voice actor who has recorded audiobooks, PSAs, Indie films, documentaries, video games, radio dramas, corporate and online training narrations, and radio and TV commercials. An Earphones Award winner, his audiobook narrations include Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, which was chosen by The Washington Post as the best audiobook of 2011.
About the Author(s) of The Ice Balloon
Alec Wilkinson is the author of The Ice Balloon
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The Ice Balloon Full Details
| Narrator | John Pruden |
| Length | 7 hours 19 minutes |
| Author | Alec Wilkinson |
| Category | |
| Publisher | Blackstone Publishing |
| Release date | April 30, 2024 |
| ISBN | 9781481591102 |
Subjects
The publisher of the The Ice Balloon is Blackstone Publishing. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Expeditions & Discoveries, History
Additional info
The publisher of the The Ice Balloon is Blackstone Publishing. The imprint is Blackstone Publishing. It is supplied by Blackstone Publishing. The ISBN-13 is 9781481591102.
Global Availability
This book is only available in the United States.
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