a book I recently read...

...though there are no actual trains involved, gives you the feeling of witnessing a train wreck. You know how you hear people talking about things that you don't want to actually look at, but they are so mesmerising in a perverse way that you find you can't Not Look? This book was like that. You knew well in advance, that it would come to a very bad end, but you keep turning pages, with the dim, faint hope that there will be some divine intervention. The predictable, tragic end you expect will not actually come to pass...

"In the Kingdom of Ice" by Hampton Sides. He has published other books, and written articles found in Outside magazine. I'd read a reference to this one, and had it on my list of things I thought I might enjoy reading. I happened upon it recently on the shelves and brought it home. I started it, but it was such a horrific tale of woe, I continually had to put it down. More than you ever wanted to know about early Arctic exploration. You can imagine with no maps or accurate info., they just went dashing off into the unknown - you know the part where you see written: 'there be dragons here' on old, incomplete maps, because no one had actually been and survived to report.

There was a lot of material available for research:  journals, diaries, personal correspondence, news articles. It was well written, with plenty of factual history. But still a harrowing tale of lead poisoning, frostbitten extremities, starvation, death by freezing, sinking into the freezing water of the north Pacific without hope of rescue. Adrift in sub-freezing temperatures in small, open, unprotected row boats with insufficient food, water and clothing, in a winter storm. Caught in pack ice for months on end with no one on the planet knowing where they were or if they were still alive. Walking across Siberian marshland with no idea where they were going, or food to provide the energy to travel. But remarkably some did manage to find help, and eventually made it back to the US, bringing the journals and their stories of survival.

I finished it, and though it is pretty gruesome, it is also fascinating. How determined they were to complete their expedition and careful in recording the events as they occurred. They knew about scurvy, and took canned vegetables to prevent health problems - then got lead poisoning from the cans! Melting ice to prevent dehydration, then getting sick from the high salt content of the water.
Desperate enough to boil their shoes to get the nutrition for staying alive, but getting frostbite and losing toes and feet from walking on snow and ice.

Don't read it in the winter, especially if you are some place where there is ice and snow.