The most recommended books about Antarctica

I took a deep dive into Lovecraft’s oeuvre this year in an effort to make my way through Alan Moore’s fantastic “Providence” (which constantly references HPL).

At the Mountains of Madness clearly stands out as his magnum opus. After a long, suspenseful trip to Antarctic wastelands, we discover an origin story for much of Lovecraft’s entire mythos, in the form of the “Elder Gods”, who despite their utter otherness still invoke our sympathies.

The love and detail which Lovecraft puts into describing these creatures and what they were attempting to do is mesmerizing, and I’m surprised how often I’ve returned to this singular piece. If you only read one HPL story, this vision of alien gods and lost civilizations will stay with you long after you've turned the last page.

If you can’t decide which of the many long stories of polar expeditions to read, this one is for you!

This book is a selection from the stories of the famous Arctic explorers: John Franklin, Roald Asmussen, Fridtjof Nansen. If you flip the book around and turn it upside down, you get a selection of Antarctic explorers of the same caliber, which is a brilliant design. 

I felt cold while reading Terra Nova, even though I was inside a warm house and under a blanket. That’s how strong the writing and imagery are in this novel, which is set in the early 1800s and narrated by three people: two Antarctic explorers locked in a race to plant a British flag at the pole and the woman back in London who loves them both.

She’s a photographer, and her decision to capture the bodies of London’s hunger strikers will have lifelong ramifications for all three of them. 

Great Circle revolves around two women I found fascinatingly complex—twentieth-century aviator Marian Graves, bent on circling the globe via the poles, and twenty-first-century actor Hadley Baxter, who struggles to capture the ineffable Marian in a Hollywood biopic.

I was blown away by the geographical and historical scope of Shipstead’s book, darting from Glasgow to Missoula, London to Alaska, from the opening of the American West through the days of Prohibition and the Second World War to contemporary Hollywood.

The cast of characters is equally huge, deftly developed, often eccentric, always interesting. For sheer societal scope, I was reminded of James Michener, but the intensity and focus of the drama are more like Melville’s in Moby Dick.

Better to say that Great Circle deserves to sit on the same shelf as another book of female adventurers I hold in awe, Sena Jeter Naslund’s remarkable Ahab’s Wife.

With this stunning introduction to Shane “Scarecrow” Schofield, Reilly hits the heights of adventure like few before him.

The action is non-stop and just when you think you have a chance to breathe, the frigid Antarctic conditions rear their head. Not so much a full on foe, as a general hindrance, I loved Ice Station because Reilly’s sparse descriptions of the landscape and inhospitable weather were just enough to bring a sympathetic shiver to me before the action kicked off again.

A gumbo of meat (often penguin), fat (typically blubber), and maybe some crushed-up biscuits, “hoosh” is the catch-all term used for meals of desperation cooked up and choked down by different historical expeditions, and it’s an apt title for Jason C. Anthony’s engaging and unique look at a slice of Antarctic living. Forget Shackleton’s heroics—what did he eat? How did early explorers survive on penguin eggs? Exactly how desperate does one have to be to eat seal brains? Why is baking at South Pole Station so difficult? Why was the Russian base Vostok stocked with so much vodka? (A question that probably answers itself.)

Anthony is a support staff veteran who has done a number of stints at various research stations on the seventh continent, and his wry narration—which weaves historical accounts with his own experiences—is great fun to read. I only encountered this book after South Pole Station was… show more.

I found this novel, a kind of elegy for Antarctica, completely transporting. I was swept up in the immensity of the glaciers, the cold and danger, the intensity of life lived so apart from the rest of the world.

The story is about several kinds of love – a romance between a female field researcher and another worker, love for the emperor and Adélie penguins she studies, and most of all, love for this imperiled continent in which most of the action takes place. I was completely captivated by the love story and the penguins, and my heart was in my mouth when the novel builds toward a disaster at sea amid dangerous calving icebergs.

The scenes in this stunning landscape are truly breathtaking. This is a truly unforgettable book, one that makes the strongest case for saving our planet than any I’ve read. I enjoyed learning about Antarctica, scientific… show more.

History is full of incredible tales; it is why I love writing and reading about it. I was so inspired by the recent re-discovery of Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, in 2022.

I loved the image of her beneath the Antarctic ice, ‘Endurance’ emblazoned across her stern. This book captures the drive and the power of the human spirit under hardship. Shackleton and his men’s open boat journey across the worst seas in the world is an amazing story, one that seems almost unreal.

Ranulph Fiennes’s experience in such extreme environments really gives an additional, sensitive layer to the narrative. Fiennes’s Captain Scott is another incredible book, this time of a gruelling journey that ended in tragedy rather than survival.

As a fan of the Magic Tree House series, I love the way that this nonfiction book weaves great information with illustrations and photographs in a fun-to-read format. This title will be a hit with animal lovers, whether they are curious about the daily lives of penguins in Antarctica or why krill are so important to the food web here. Adventure seekers will revel in the daring exploits of explorers from the past. They’ll also learn about what it’s like to visit Antarctica today. The additional resources in the back of the book looked terrific and made me want to explore more of this frozen continent.

A Natural History of the Senses is gorgeously written and poetic while simultaneously presenting accurate basic science about our five senses. Diane Ackerman stunningly shows how a gifted writer can decipher a field, captivate the general public, and elicit the fascination and wonder that a topic deserves. I am also ever delighted by the fact that the book starts with the sense of smell, rather than relegating it to the least and last section as most books on our senses do. A Natural History of the Senses is a beautiful compendium of biology and a tour of human perception.