Antarctica: The Blue Continent is a superbly illustrated and easy-to-understand book that reveals this polar region's ruthless majesty and natural beauty.

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Product Description

Illustrated guide to Antarctica's environment, geography, wildlife, and history.

Antarctica: The Blue Continent is a superbly illustrated and easy-to-understand book that reveals this polar region's ruthless majesty and natural beauty.

The environment is Earth's harshest, coldest, most inhospitable climate. A staggering 98% of the continent is covered with ice averaging 1.4 miles in depth; 90% of the world's ice is found in there. In spite of the cold and ice, Antarctica's shores and waters are home to an amazing variety of vegetation and indigenous wildlife-seals, sea lions, whales, penguins and sea birds-that have evolved in extraordinary ways to adapt to their unforgiving habitat. The book features natural phenomena such as a glacier made of jagged, Jurassic-era rock instead of ice, and entire mountain ranges filled to their peaks with snow.

In the chapters on polar exploration, Antarctica profiles Captain Cook, Roald Amundsen, Shackleton, Scott, and others. Readers will experience why this continent has inspired so much effort and heroism in the quest to discover its secrets.

This book is a concise version of the authors' 608-page Antarctica and the Arctic.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #342160 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

About the Author

David McGonigal is an award-winning travel writer, photographer and fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. His writing and research on Antarctica combine academic accuracy, journalistic realism and a seasoned traveler's unbounded enthusiasm for the world's coldest, wildest places.

Dr. Lynn Woodworth is a wildlife researcher. She has traveled extensively throughout both polar regions.

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Customer Reviews

An excellent overview.
This book is full of gorgeous pictures and well-written segments that provide information in easily digested and very informative pieces. It covers topics like geology, ancient and present day ecology, geography, flora and fauna, really everything you could ask for. It would make a good reference for schoolwork that doesn't need to be highly scientific or extremely detailed. If it had that kind of additional detail, I'd give it the last star, but then it would likely be twice as thick and much more difficult to read. For the person who just wants to learn more about antarctica, this is the book for you and probably a five star purchase!

great coffee table type book on Antarctica
This large format style book has excellent photographs, illustrations, and maps on virtually every page in addition to text and related detailed captions.

It is broken down into four parts - the Antarctic environment, regions, wildlife, and exploration history. Each of these four main parts are broken down further into smaller topics. For instance the wildlife section has several pages detailed to each animal type (whales, seals, penguins, seabirds, etc) and then broken down further into each specific species of them by seperate text section with stats and a map showing that specific animal location around Antarctica. The exploration section similiarly is broken down into smaller timeframes (three timeframes) of discovery and expeditions.

Ovearall a great overview of everything Antarctica. Great book for reading and also for just for browsing through.

Antarctica book
A beautiful book that arrived in excellent condition...well packaged and in a very timely manner! Excellent service! Thank you! MW