This is an excellent book for those who are looking for a guide for whalewatching. But it is more technical than the average, which is good in some cases. FOr me it was very useful when going to sea, because I wanted detailed information, but other people look only for pictures. Which is the only problem here, because they are all in black and white.

This manual contains the technical information necessary for distinguishing similar species at sea. Numerous black-and-white photos show all important field characteristics. Detailed analysis of the field characteristics separating the various large Balaenopterids is especially useful. Species which have been recorded as accidental are also included. Updating information about the presence of Hyperoodon (or Indopacetus??) in Pacific waters near the equator would be useful, although photos of 'unidentified' Ziphidae are included. This is the only book I take out with me for field cruises.

Arctic Son keeps the reader "involved" and teaches you about surviving the Arctic North. I learned it is not something I would like to do, with months upon months of frozen everything and darkness. This book helps you to appreciate what you have and the warmth of your own home! It is nice for this authro to write about her adventures in the Arctic and share this true life tale with us, the readers.

I recommend reading this if you are interested in exploring the world around you, especially the wild and frigid Arctic North.

I first heard of Jean Aspen when a condensed version of her first book, Arctic Daughter, appeared in a Reader's Digest. I have since acquired, with difficulty, my own copy of that book. I later located Arctic Son in a used bookstore. I felt the point of both books was not to elevate the art of literature, but rather to convey the life-shaping experiences of her years in the arctic, using literature as the medium. I understand Jean and Tom filmed portions of their time in Alaska during the "Arctic Son" period, and I would love to locate a copy of that, if possible. Any help out there???? At any rate, both books are great to curl up with and dream about during a long winter.

I couldn't wait to read this book after having enjoyed Arctic Daughter. The two adventure stories stand alone as exceptional works -- not of literature -- but of true adventure stories. I found Arctic Son to be true to Jean Aspen, the woman and adventurer. It was real in content, description of events, feelings and thoughts, and it allowed me to live out my own dream of building a cabin in Alaska without leaving home. Additionally, Arctic Son proved that even after a family comes along, adventure is still attainable and very rewarding to the soul of all. At the same time, the mental and physical risks and costs of such high adventure are made quite clear. This book was just as good, if not sweeter, than the first book. Also, it isn't necessary to read both books sequentially to understand events or motivation.

The first time I saw,Never Cry Wolf, I thought I would not enjoy reading it. First, because it was an assigned literary book to read: secondly, it was not a book I would normally select to read. However, I was pleasantly surprised with this book, and thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Farley Mowat, the author, has an incredible vocabulary that he uses to tell the story. But, while he may use some scientific or big words it doesn't distract the reader too much. In his writing, Mowat has a lovable quality, sarcasm. This trait makes the book fun to read and easily relatable to real life and people.

Mowat takes the reader to the world of the Arctic Wolves in the Canadian wilderness. The narrator, a biologist, is sent by the government to explore the life of the wolf, and, more specifically, to find out more information on how the wolf is interacting with the other species of life. What the narrator learns through his study changes his views on the wolf and on the world. He realizes that things aren't always as they seem, and facts are not always simple to understand.

I really enjoyed this book. It was well written and kept the reader thinking. I was continually wondering how many other things we, as a society, might have misconceptions about. I loved the style of writing. I could have read the book in one setting. It was funny, egotistical yet humble, and kept me enthralled. After reading Farley Mowat's story, I was ready to head out and live on the Alaskan tundra with wolves and eskimos. Who doesn't need a break from the world once in a while? Luckily, I was able to mentally visit the wolves and enjoy the comfort of my recliner at the same time. It was like Discovery Channel, only the narrator was hilarious. Great book!!!!

Though Mowat's experience with wolves occurred over 30 years ago, it managed to captivate my interest and provide me additional insight to a species I am very concerned about. As a short novel, I wasn't sure whether Mowat intended his narrative to be that of a scientific account or a "coming to terms" with the human/wolf spiritual experience. Either way, it was in parts both vastly entertaining as well as intellectually well-grounded and thoughtful. Anyone concerned about the constant perpetuation of negative myths about wolves in our or any culture should read as much as possible about wolves in order to begin to understand where society has wronged such an intelligent, special animal. Mowat's book is an excellent source of information for the conservationist seeking a view into the lives of an artic wolf family, as well as for the reader who may have no idea how unfairly ostracized this species has been--30 years ago or not, the concepts of human encroachment, unfounded hatred and unjustified blame are alive today, as is human's preoccupation with pest control in the name of profits.

Tim Moore has written one of the best travel books I've read in the last five years. His humour is contagious and one finds oneself urging him on as he battles across the northern seas in the footsteps of a 19th Century British aristocrat. Icelanders with a sense of humour about their own country's idiosyncrasies will find the book a delight. The remaining 98% of the population will demand the author is detained and given the full bottom inspection treatment next time he passes through Reykjavik airport. If you enjoy Bill Bryson then you will enjoy Moore. Moore is as funny but is significantly more insightful and ruder! As a regular traveler to Europe this is one of those books I would recommend packing to read as you zip over the pond to the UK (or even Iceland!)

You will enjoy this fumbling traveller's tribute to a personal hero. Tim Moore's trials and tribulations are too comic to be tragic. His dogged determination to complete a journey in the footsteps of Lord Dufferin keeps him going through graphic sea sickness and prolific pronunciation problems (try Icelandic & Norwegian on the same trip!). The heavy dose of British references means some jokes will be wasted if you don't know much about the UK, but literary slapstick a la Jerry Lewis will keep you giggling anyway.

This is a great book to read as you embark on any journey that looks a bit daunting. If he can survive, anyone can (don't worry, he knows this, too!).

To be considered more than just a good book, any travelogue has to show more than simply intelligence, humour or stylish writing. It requires a good theme - the writer needs to have an original and clearly defined purpose. In all of these criterion (and more presumably)Moore has surpassed all of my own expectations that I had before I bought it. The humour is, in places very English, but that should not deter anyone else from reading it. The only real reason why Tim can't be regarded as an equal to Bill Bryson is because unlike Bill, who has lived in Britain and America for vast periods of time, Moore only knows life in Britain. This alone is probably enough to put lots of Americans, Canadians, Australians etc. off but the fact that many people cant understand the jokes must be very frustrating. Personally, I understood it all but that's firstly because of where I'm from and secondly because I'm a cynic and enjoy reading books where the writer is self-depreciating. The book is informative and witty but something tells me that an attempt at another travel book might prove foolish on his part. He would need at least as good a theme and would need to sustain his humour over an even longer period. Read this one though - it's good.

...Delta Force (who plays a big role in the book) was not really used in an accurate way. For one thing they would not keep messing up their missions like they did in the book. I read a book by Eric Haney (that is very good) called Inside Delta Force. Eric Haney is a founding member of Delta Force, and after reading Haney's book I found it very hard to believe that Delta Force would behave the way they did out on the ice flow or when they targeted the ship (later on in the book). Dan Brown kind of makes them look a little stupid leaving his main characters a chance to escape in a James Bond type of way. I would also find it hard to believe that Delta Force would be used to target innocent people (I guess that could be another debate). I think that the book could have come off better if the bad guys were someone else other than Delta Force (maybe like some I.R.S. agents... just kidding)... Other times the characters would really be in trouble, and of course something really convenient would happen to give them a chance to escape, or they just acted in the nick of time.... In any event, the book does move fast, and it has some really interesting parts. I have read the Da Vinci Code which was just ok (some of the factual information in that book was really stretched, and in some cases not true at all), but I still plan to read all of his books. Even though I might have problems with his books here and there they seem to move fast and are good at holding the reader's attention.

"Deception Point" opens in Washington, DC, during a tight Presidential campaign. The incumbent, a man of strong principles, is a major NASA supporter. His opponent, who is basing his campaign on turning NASA into a private, non-governmental agency, thus saving the US taxpayer billions of dollars annually, is way up in the polls. He is also accepting enormous illegal campaign contributions from private aerospace companies who have billions to gain from the privatization of NASA. After many failures & much spending, NASA is badly in need of a success.

Then a NASA satellite detects a large, high-density rock buried 200 feet below the Milne Ice Shelf on Ellesmere Island, high in the Arctic Circle. NASA scientists determine the rock to be a meteor containing fossils proving that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

To verify the authenticity of the find, the White House sends a team of independent experts to the NASA habisphere, built over the meteor in the Arctic Circle. One of these experts is the intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton, the daughter of Senator Sedgewick Sexton. Senator Sexton is the man running for election against the President of the United States. The plot thickens.

Rachel, while in the Arctic, uncovers what could be scientific trickery - an incredible deception that could cause political and scientific upheaval and cost the President his bid for re-election. When she & her colleagues attempt to investigate further, they are plunged into life threatening danger. To escape assassination they flee for their lives. Their only hope for survival is to discover who is behind this extraordinary plot and expose the truth.

Dan Brown has proven to be one of the top writers in the suspense-thriller genre. The originality of his plots, his amazingly accurate research, and his ability to catch the reader's interest from the get-go and hold it until the last word in the last sentence of the last page, make him an exceptional author. Plus, after completing each of Dan Brown's books, the reader usually comes away from the experience having learned much more than a storyline. I loved "Deception Point" - couldn't put it down. I also highly recommend "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons."

Unbelievably good. Out-Crichtons Michael. Out-Clanceys Tom. What a brillliant mind. First Dan Brown builds a fantastic hypothesis and then slowly undoes it. This man should work for the CIA, he is such a brain! This is a terrific story about how NASA falls on its own sword. The characters are well drawn, the women especially. The inside workings of politics is a fun story. How can one writer know so much? One of the best thrillers I have read in several years. Every chapter is a cliff-hanger. When a NASA satellite in the Arctic discovers a meteorite buried deep in a glacier, the foundering Agency grabs the publicity to save it from being voted out of existence by dollar-hungry senators and representatives. The president is also in need of a something to boost his sagging polls. This looks like the life-saver, until it begins to look like a gigantic hoax. And on top of that, someone is willing to kill, and does murder several scientists, in orer to prevent exposure. You won't be able to put this down, once you start it. A high-concept novel, yet thoroughly believeable.

Hmm. It's hard to know what to think of this after the first two chapters. Quickly afterwards, it becomes clear that this is going nowhere and aggregating into nothing. Yes, there are characters, and yes, they "do things," but somehow none of it ever adds up. It's as though the author took all of the elements that go into a story, exaggerated them tremendously, and then settled them onto the page without any thought as to how they related to one another.

Thus, we have a hero, we have the backdrop of Alaska, we have a series of actions in an overdescribed melieu. Detail upon detail upon detail is ladled out, and it never takes us anywhere. This problem sinks down into the sentence level as well. Words are thrown together one after another awkwardly, as though the writer is reaching for a word--any word at all--and then committing to it without thought. Three quarters of the adjectives could have been cut from this to better effect. The ultimate result is like the feeling of a junkyard full of discarded industrial parts, through which we are led without much plan or purpose.

It's hard to find a genre for the resultant book. It is not an adventure story, because there is no sustained tension. It is not a love story, because the women exist more as abstract constructs than as real people. It is not a literary novel, as the highly developed style and imagistic resonance is missing.

The book is perhaps best described as a veil of shadows and fog and ice. It consists of all of the mechanical parts askew on the floor, without anyone bothering to lay them out in a way that makes sense, much less assemble a finished product.

It would be too easy to say that the result is disappointment. It is more accurate to say that I am bewildered.

When an author cannot decide whether the theme of his novel is man's struggle against the harshest of nature's elements or man's struggle with his inner demons, then the reader will thrash around trying to decide what struggle to focus on. While the novel's title refers to the broadcast channel of the marine international distress signal, it really is just a metaphor for the protagonist's life which is in distress. Framed against the backdrop of life on Artic Sea tugboats, the reader is exposed to a life only a handful of humans would ever experience or want to experience for that matter. With all due respect to the men and women who toil on the high seas for their daily bread, this book is better skipped.

Proving that working on a tugboat exposes one to a technology, lifestyle and terminology that is foreign to even the most sea-faring audience, the author loses his readers from the opening chapter. Descriptive writing shouldn't be confused with detailed writing; here all we have are endless details that contribute nothing to moving the story along; there are so many details that I almost gave up on this book after the first few chapters. Looking to pass the time on a two hour flight with this relatively short novel, I was sorely disappointed.

Not everything in this book is disappointing; the characters are intriguing and I would have liked more of a story where these characters who spend months on end at sea were developed. The author's eye for detail should be directed toward the detail necessary for character development. I had to remind myself that this was a novel, not a nonfiction selection about tugboats.

What a rare combination. A novel about work written someone who has really done the work AND can really write a novel. Features one of the best female characters in modern fiction.

David W. Shaw has given us a gripping account of the steamship Arctic, which sank in September 1854 while making a crossing from Liverpool. The book is informed by his wide knowledge as a seaman, and his grasp of the economic competition between U.S. ship company owner Collins and his British rival, Cunard. The steamship was traveling as quickly as its boilers could take it, even in inpenetrable fog, when it collided with a smaller vessel, the French steamship, Vesta.

Ironically at first, it looked as it the Vesta was fatally damaged, and Captain Luce of the Arctic had to make one of the toughest decisions a mariner must face: He had to try to save his own passengers and crew and leave the people on the Vesta to their fates. But it soon became apparent that the Arctic was sinking quickly, without nearly enough lifeboats for all the people on board. In the chaos that followed, all the women and children passengers were lost. Only the strongest and most agile survived, most of them crew members. As for the Vesta, although many suffered loss of life, the ship was able to limp into Newfoundland days later.

Shaw writes well, although occasionally his foreshadowing is heavily overdone. This can be partially excused, since we know the tragic outcome of the tale, but it gives his work an amateurish quality. Overall, this harrowingly sad sea yarn will hold your attention throughout.

I found this book to be a well written account of a tragic maritime accident. Captain Luce, the captain of the SS Arctic, comes alive on the pages. His love for his disabled son comes across strongly and makes Luce human across the distance of 150 years. The book introduces us to a time when the American shipping industry (taking advantage of the British being occupied with the Crimean War) led the world in transatlantic shipping. The author shows us how the competitive nature of the time to always be the fastest led to the disaster. When the tragedy strikes and the ship is damaged, the author brings the disaster to life as we see the crew abandoning women and children (not a single woman or child survived the sinking) as they steal the few lifeboats the ship carried. It is in discussing the events after the sinking where the book fails in my opinion. Nothing was done to punish the crew and the author doesn't really explain why the maritime courts never sought out the crew for punishment. Overall, however, the book is well written and informative.

It's always refreshing to find a book that tells me about a little known incident in American history. This book, concerning the 1854 sinking of the steamship Arctic, is one of those books. As an added bonus, it's extremely well-written, reading almost as if it were a novel. There are a lot of nautical terms thrown about, but there is a glossary to help those, like myself, who are unfamiliar with them. We get a capsule history of the Great Race across the Atlantic between competing British and American companies, and a bit about ship design 150 years ago, when most were wooden, with side paddle wheels. The story about the collision of the Arctic with another ship, and the subsequent tragedy that happened because many crew members ignored the adage "women and children first" is heartbreaking. The astonishing survival of some of the folks from the ship, including the captain, is quite riveting, in large part because of the excellent writing involved. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it to others.

My mother gave this book to me when I was ten, which was a very long time ago. Those images of the mummies, so well-preserved that they don't look like mummies but like still-living human beings in some eternal pain we can't imagine -- they gave me nightmares then and they can still chill me to the stomach.

My mother gave this book to me when I was ten, which was a very long time ago. Those images of the mummies, so well-preserved that they don't look like mummies but like still-living human beings in some eternal pain we can't imagine -- they gave me nightmares then and they can still chill me to the stomach.

After seeing a clip on the Franklin Expedition in a documentary on mummies, I rushed to the library to see if there was a book on the subject. The only one available was this book in the juvenile section. At first I was disappointed, but, noticing a photo of the preserved body of one of the sailors, I checked it out. For a kids' book, this one is pretty cool. The first part of the book is a fictionalized (and very sanitized) story of life for the average seaman on the doomed expedition. This story leaves the reader with questions that the author will answer in the second section describing the disinterring of three buried crew members and the information their well-preserved remains revealed. The photos are amazing and make this book fascinating for all ages (I don't remember juvenile books being this cool when I was a kid). The reading level and, at times, disturbing content is probably appropriate for kids 5th grade and up.

Susan Solomon has tried very hard in this well-written and documented new book to exonerate Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the leader of the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1911-1912. In recent years Scott has been accused of everything from simple incompetence to real stupidity by critics of his leadership and organization, which Solomon, an NOAA scientist with a distinguished career and Antarctic experience, clearly finds unjustified. By extensively researching not only the original documentation - diaries of Scott and his men, the expedition's meteorological records, information from other Antarctic expeditions of the day such as Shackleton's 1908-1909 try for the pole and Amundsen's successful polar bid of 1911-1912 - but also modern meteorological data, now available for some years along the entirety of Scott's route to the pole (now the course for aircraft bound for the Amundsen-Scott Station), she has tried her level best to suggest that abnormally cold weather was the deciding factor in the loss of the five-man polar party. And indeed cold weather must have been a factor. The poor weather conditions not only would have debilitated the men and caused severe frostbite, the friction of cold snow would have made it almost impossible for the men to pull their sledges more than a few miles a day. Indeed Solomon has charted the progress of the polar party, comparing it with the two supporting parties that turned back short of the pole, and her information does demonstrate how badly slowed up Scott and his four companions were.

The trouble remains, however, that while poor weather clearly contributed to the loss of Captain Scott and his men, Scott's own mistakes and poor planning were also a factor, and to her great credit Solomon does not conceal them, just as Scott, an undeniably courageous and honest man, did not conceal them in his own writings. Scott's assiduous copying of Shackleton's mistakes in 1908-09 (the use of ponies, reliance on unproven motor transport), his own short cuts (spending time testing his motor sledges but not clothing, tents, or other gear), and his failures in leadership (taking five men instead of the planned four to the pole) were instrumental, I believe, in his failure to survive the trek. One also must question why, after the blizzard that trapped the men in their tent 11 miles from a depot of food and fuel, the two well men, Dr. Wilson and the redoubtable Lt. Bowers, did not leave Scott, who was crippled by frostbite, and go to the depot for supplies or even, in the finale extremity, leave Scott to die and save themselves, something Solomon herself seems to find as mysterious as others who have pondered the question, although she advances a possible explanation.

Overall this is a very good book, the first to take into account modern knowledge of Antarctic weather and apply it to Scott's tragic expedition. Although I don't feel that the author has entirely proved her thesis, it is a valuable and useful contribution to the controversy over Captain Scott's expedition.

I've always been more interested in Arctic exploration than the Antarctic -- it seems less two-dimensional, and far more colorful in terms of history. But this book really got my attention. Solomon isn't some armchair theorist, she is an Antarctic professional, and an expert on weather conditions there. Taking a close look at what happened to Scott's 1911-12 expedition, and contrasting it with his earlier journey (with Shackleton) plus Shackleton's 1908 attempt, and the rival Amundsen polar bid, she shakes out a lot of rumors, innuendos and plain nonsense about what Scott 'knew' versus what he 'ought to have known.'

Scott has always seemed a stiff-upper-lip bumbler to me, and to some extent he was, but what happened is not as simple as it appears. He made some educated guesses, and he also made some mistakes. Using motor sleds was a waste of time, considering the poor engine technology of the time. He allowed someone else to select some unsuitable Manchurian ponies. He didn't trust dogs, based on prior experiences. He didn't pay enough attention to suitable clothing and sleeping bags. But he did set up a workable logistical system for his polar attempt, that should have worked.

So what went wrong? The factors above, plus too great a level of fatigue for his team. Poor Bowers ended up walking 400 miles in snow, instead of skiing. They didn't know, as we do, what a menace dehydration at high altitudes would be. Scurvy was poorly understood, and they probably suffered marginally from this, too. And finally, they set out for the Pole a month too late, and got caught in an extremely cold spell that made sledding by manhauling almost impossible. Solomon proves every contention with solid data from the expedition's copious records and from modern survey work. In the end, Scott died -- with Wilson and Bowers keeping him company, in all probability -- because he contracted severe frostbite in -40 degree weather. The idea that he was trapped by a '10 day blizzard' just eleven miles short of a supply depot is disproved by Solomon: the katabatic winds don't blow from the south for more than two or three days, it now seems.

This is a well-written, highly documented piece of work, and is not in any sense an attempt to 'whitewash' Scott. Starting late, and hitting some extremely bad weather was all it took to kill him and his four brave companions.

This is a fascinating tale of high adventure in Antarctica that is well documented with all the scientific facts that a scientist or scholar would demand in a research paper. I chose to read it as a true story of a heroic struggle by a determined group of men who willingly followed Scott out of love and respect, despite terrible hardships. Besides the obvious hardship of the cold, the men also faced death by drowning, starvation, disease and were even threatened by Killer Whales trying to break through the ice to get to the men and the horses. A must read for the real or would be adventurer!

There is no joy in this book. Not a redeeming sentence. I lived in Fairbanks for two years and I am glad I never met this family. They critize others for doing the same thing they did to their land i.e. "rape it". There are a lot better books than this about living in the North. Driftwood Valley is one of the best.

If you're looking for a survival story about a family abandoning their roots in the lower 48 and setting up stakes in Northern Alaska,this will suffice. If you're looking for a tale about one family and its total domination over wilderness,this is it once again. Norma Cobb literally worships her husband Les and glorifies him on virtually every page of the book. He kills every bear they ever encounter whether just traipsing through the homestead or those unfortunate enough to be rousted from hibernation by drunken Les and his friends. Book not as entertaining or as informative as I thought it would be. The Cobbs are pitted against the world which incudes their neighbors and what pases as the law during Les' poaching escapades and his booze running,any and all wildlife that ventures close enough and the reslt is total vanquishment of anything that gets in Lesters' way. They act as the very first frontiersmen must have 100 or so years ago but with the advantage of modern conveniences and better know-how. Book passes as an average tale of hardship.

I read this book because I have always had an interest in the lives of those who choose to live in the wilderness. Louise Dickinson Rich (We Took to the Woods) and Deanna Kawatski (Wilderness Mother) come to mind. Norma Cobb's account of her family's homesteading in Alaska is very readable but unlike these other books, her writer's focus is on the high drama of their lives rather than an account of their daily life. I came away wondering if some of that drama (and it's one drama after another) was self induced. Norma and Les Cobb seem to be awfully shrewd judges of character, but unfortunately after the fact. There are several incidents where she feels they are 'ripped off' or worse by people they encounter. After a while I started to find her guilty of what she was accusing those people of; blaming someone else for their problems. I came away from this book feeling that Norma Cobb has little patience for anyone she deems less perfect than herself. I do not deny that their life in remote Alaska is a challenge few could rise to and her book is a gripping account of that life, but there is an edge to her story that left me wondering if anyone but God could meet her standards for a neighbor.