To the Edges of the Earth: 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration

	
By Edward J. Larson

Narrated by Paul Michael Garcia

Published by HarperAudio in 2018 

English, 12 hours 11 minutes, Unabridged

MP3 64 kbps, 332.78 MB, 12 file(s)


From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, an entwined narrative of the most adventurous year of all time, when three expeditions simultaneously raced to the top, bottom, and heights of the world.

As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration—set at the world's frozen extremes—lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called "Third Pole," the pole of altitude, located in unexplored heights of the Himalaya. Before the calendar turned, three expeditions had faced death, mutiny, and the harshest conditions on the planet to plant flags at the furthest edges of the Earth.

In the course of one extraordinary year, Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson were hailed worldwide at the discovers of the North Pole; Britain's Ernest Shackleton had set a new geographic "Furthest South" record, while his expedition mate, Australian Douglas Mawson, had reached the Magnetic South Pole; and at the roof of the world, Italy's Duke of the Abruzzi had attained an altitude record that would stand for a generation, the result of the first major mountaineering expedition to the Himalaya's eastern Karakoram, where the daring aristocrat attempted K2 and established the standard route up the most notorious mountain on the planet