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The greatest polar expedition of all time : the Arctic mission to the epicenter of climate change / by Rex, Markus,author.; Göring, Marlene,author.; Pybus, Sarah,translator.; translation of:Rex, Markus.Eingefroren am Nordpol.English.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A captain's tell-all about the world's largest Arctic expedition--an illuminating account of seafaring adventure, Arctic natural history, and cutting-edge climate science. The book about the Mosaic Expedition: as seen in the documentary film Arctic Drift, Atmospheric scientist Markus Rex recounts the monumental Arctic expedition he captained for one year in this gripping and authoritative book. A groundbreaking step towards understanding the climate crisis, the MOSAiC expedition--launched in 2019 by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research--was the first of its kind, journeying deep into the epicentre of climate change, the Arctic, to seek hard-to-find and potentially world-changing scientific data. Rex begins with life aboard the Polarstern, a powerful icebreaker ship that is frozen into fragile ice and carried across the Arctic by the Transpolar Drift. Away from the rest of the world, the team prepares for life under brutal conditions, constructing "cities" and "towns" on the ice where they will study the Arctic ecosystem, its atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, and more. A terrifying feat that had never been attempted before, the team of hundreds of scientists perform their research during terrifying storms, cracking ice floes, frost-bite, and even quarantines as Covid-19 sweeps the globe. But there are heartwarming moments, too, as Markus Rex describes Christmas parties on the ice and polar bears playing with scientific equipment like puppies. He muses on expeditions past, such as the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, and Fridtjof Nansen's Fram expedition, which he follows as a guide. And he explores answers to the pressing questions facing the Arctic today: How will climate change impact this precious ecosystem--and therefore the rest of the world? What is the best way to protect the Arctic? Interweaving history, science, and memoir, The Greatest Polar Expedition of All Time is a page-turner about the teamwork it takes to complete a risky goal, all in the name of understanding--and responding to--the climate crisis"--
Subjects: Polarstern (Ship); MOSAiC expedition (2019); Global warming; Global warming; Scientific expeditions;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Paradise of the damned : the true story of an obsessive quest for El Dorado, the legendary city of gold / by Thomson, Keith,1965-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.The transporting account of an obsessive quest to find El Dorado, set against the backdrop of Elizabethan political intrigue and a competition with Spanish conquistadors for the legendary city's treasure. As early as 1530, reports of El Dorado, a city of gold in the South American interior, beckoned to European explorers. Whether there was any truth to the stories remained to be seen, but the allure of unimaginable riches was enough to ensnare dozens of would-be heroes and glory hounds in the desperate hunt. Among them was Sir Walter Raleigh: ambitious courtier, confidant to Queen Elizabeth, and, before long, El Dorado fanatic. Entering the Elizabethan court as an upstart from a family whose days of nobility were far behind them, Raleigh used his military acumen, good looks, and sheer audacity to scramble into the limelight. Yet that same swagger proved to be his undoing, as his secret marriage to a lady-in-waiting enraged Queen Elizabeth and landed him in the Tower of London. Between his ensuing grim prospects at court and his underlying lust for adventure, the legend of El Dorado became an unwavering siren song that hypnotized Raleigh. On securing his release, he journeyed across an ocean to find the fabled city, gambling his painstakingly acquired wealth, hard-won domestic bliss, and his very life. What awaited him in the so-called New World were endless miles of hot, dense jungle packed with deadly flora and fauna, warring Spanish conquistadors and Indigenous civilizations, and other unforeseen dangers. Meanwhile, back at home, his multitude of rivals plotted his demise. Paradise of the Damned, like Keith Thomson's critically acclaimed Born to Be Hanged, brings this story to life in lush and captivating detail. The book charts Raleigh's obsessive search for El Dorado -- as well as the many doomed expeditions that preceded and accompanied his -- providing not only an invaluable history but also a gripping narrative of traveling to the ends of the earth only to realize, too late, that what lies at home is the greatest treasure of all.
Subjects: Biographies.; Raleigh, Walter, Sir, 1552?-1618.; El Dorado.; Explorers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Confessions A Novel [electronic resource] : by Airey, Catherine.aut; cloudLibrary;
"Confessions is a remarkable debut. A complex and compulsive read that unravels the intricate twists and revelations among three generations of women with elegance and urgency." —Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace For fans of The Goldfinch and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, a mesmerizing and absorbing debut that follows three generations of women from New York to rural Ireland and back again. New York City, late September 2001. The walls of the city are papered over with photos of the missing. Cora Brady’s father is there, the poster she made taped to columns and bridges. When a letter arrives from an aunt she didn’t know existed in Ireland with the offer of a new life, the name jogs a memory: an old videocassette game Cora used to play as a child where two sisters must save the students of a mysterious boarding school. County Donegal, 1974. An eclectic group of artists known as the Screamers arrives in Burtonport and moves into the old schoolhouse down the road from where Róisín lives with her older sister Máire. Alternately kind and cruel, brilliant artist Máire is a mystery to Róisín, as is Máire’s relationship with the boy next door, Michael. When the Screamers look to hire an artist in residence, Róisín enlists Michael’s help to get Máire the job, setting in motion a chain of events that will put an ocean between the sisters and threaten to tear them apart forever. Burtonport, 2018. Lyca Brady lives in a sprawling old house with her mother, Cora, and great aunt, Ro. Abortion has just been legalized in Ireland, and Lyca is struggling to find herself outside her mother’s activism. An unexpected message from a childhood friend sends Lyca searching her house’s mysterious attic, with its strange collection of old medical equipment, piles of paperwork, and dusty boxes of ancient video games. There, she unearths secrets hidden for decades—secrets perhaps better left unknown. Catherine Airey’s haunting debut spins a mesmerizing story of family and fate, survival and revelation, examining the irresistible gravity of the past—how it endures through generations, pervasively present even when buried or forgotten.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Literary; Family Life; Sagas; Contemporary Women;
© 2025., HarperCollins,
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Not on my watch : how a renegade whale biologist took on governments and industry to save wild salmon / by Morton, Alexandra,1957-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Alexandra Morton has been called "the Jane Goodall of Canada." Here is her brilliant account of her thirty-year fight to save British Columbia's wild salmon, inspiring in its own right but also a roadmap of resistance. Alexandra Morton came north from California in the early 1980s, following her first love--the northern resident orca. In remote Echo Bay, in the Broughton Archipelago, she found the perfect place to settle into all she had ever dreamed of: a lifetime of observing and learning what these big-brained mammals are saying to each other. She was also lucky enough to get there just in time to witness a place of true natural abundance, and learned how to thrive in the wilderness as a scientist and a single mother. Then, in 1989, industrial aquaculture moved into the region, chasing the whales away. Her First Nations neighbours, whose people had depended on the bounty of wild salmon for 10,000 years, asked her if she would write letters on their behalf to government protesting the damage the farms were doing to the fisheries, and one thing led to another. Soon Alex had shifted her scientific focus to documenting the infectious diseases and parasites that pour from the ocean pens of Atlantic salmon into the migration routes of wild Pacific salmon, and then to proving their disastrous impact on wild salmon and the entire ecosystem of the coast. Alex stood against the farms, first representing her community, then alone, and at last as part of an uprising that built around her as ancient Indigenous governance resisted a province and a country that wouldn't recognize their own laws. She has used her science, many acts of protest and the legal system in her unrelenting efforts to save wild salmon--a story that reveals her own doggedness and bravery but also shines a bright light on the ways other humans doggedly resist the truth. Here, she brilliantly calls those humans to account: for their sake, as much as ours, they need to listen to the wisdom of the wild salmon and of the people who have lived with them for 10,000 years."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Morton, Alexandra, 1957-; Marine biologists; Pacific salmon; Salmon farming;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 3
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Graveyard of the Pacific : shipwreck and survival on America's deadliest waterway / by Sullivan, Randall,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A vivid portrait of the Columbia River Bar that combines maritime history, adventure journalism, and memoir, bringing alive the history--and present--of one of the most notorious stretches of water in the world. Off the coast of Oregon, the Columbia River flows into the Pacific Ocean and forms the Columbia River Bar: a watery collision so turbulent and deadly that it's nicknamed the Graveyard of the Pacific. Two thousand ships have been wrecked on the bar since the first European ship dared to try to cross it in the late eighteenth century. For decades ships continued to make the bar crossing with great peril, first with native guides and later with opportunistic newcomers, as Europeans settled in Washington and Oregon, displacing the natives and transforming the river into the hub of a booming region. Since then, the commercial importance of the Columbia River has only grown, and despite the construction of jetties on either side, the bar remains treacherous, even today a site of shipwrecks and dramatic rescues as well as power struggles between small fishermen, powerful shipowners, local communities in Washington and Oregon, the Coast Guard, and the Columbia River Bar Pilots--a small group of highly skilled navigators who help guide ships through the mouth of the Columbia. When Randall Sullivan and a friend set out to cross the bar in a two-man kayak, they're met with skepticism and concern. But on a clear day in July when the tides and weather seem right, they embark. As they plunge through the waves, Sullivan ponders the generations of sailors that made the crossing before him-including his own abusive father, a sailor himself who also once dared to cross the bar--and reflects on toxic masculinity, fatherhood, and what drives men to extremes. Rich with exhaustive research and propulsive narrative, Graveyard of the Pacific follows historical shipwrecks through the moment-by-moment details that often determined whether sailors would live or die, exposing the ways in which boats, sailors, and navigation have changed over the decades. As he makes his way across the bar, floating above the wrecks and across the same currents that have taken so many lives, Randall Sullivan faces the past, both in his own life and on the Columbia River Bar"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Sullivan, Randall.; Shipwrecks;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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A Marriage at Sea A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck [electronic resource] : by Elmhirst, Sophie.aut; CloudLibrary;
“Gird your loins and line up your couple’s therapist.” – New York Times Book Review podcast “This is nonfiction that reads like fiction – the best kind. Elmhirst’s retelling is a triumph, second only to the seemingly impossible feat of Maurice and Maralyn themselves. You won’t be able to put it down.” – USA Today “Such an emotionally vivid portrait of a couple in isolation that I was shocked it wasn’t fiction. How could a writer get so deeply into the minds of two real people in such extraordinary circumstances? … So brilliantly depicted.” – Elle, Best Books of Summer “A beautiful meditation on endurance, codependence, and the power of love. A dazzling book.” – Patrick Radden Keefe “An enthralling, engrossing story of survival and the resilience of the human spirit.” —Bill Bryson The electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked at sea: a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership stretched to its limits. Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner, awkward and obsessive; she’s charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away? Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But in June 1972, Maurice and Maralyn set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves. What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can’t run away from themselves. Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea pairs an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Love & Romance; Women;
© 2025., Penguin Publishing Group,
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Madhouse at the end of the Earth / by Sancton, Julian,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The harrowing true survival story of an early polar expedition that went terribly awry--with the ship frozen in ice and the crew trapped inside for the entire sunless Antarctic winter--in the tradition of David Grann, Nathaniel Philbrick, and Hampton Sides. In August 1897, the young Belgian commandant Adrien de Gerlache set sail for a three year expedition aboard the good ship Belgica with dreams of glory. His destination was the uncharted end of the earth: the icy continent of Antarctica. But de Gerlache's plans to be first to the magnetic South Pole would swiftly go awry. After a series of costly setbacks, the commandant faced two bad options: turn back in defeat and spare his men the devastating Antarctic winter, or recklessly chase fame by sailing deeper into the freezing waters. De Gerlache sailed on, and soon the Belgica was stuck fast in the icy hold of the Bellingshausen Sea. When the sun set on the magnificent polar landscape one last time, the ship's occupants were condemned to months of endless night. In the darkness, plagued by a mysterious illness and besieged by monotony, they descended into madness. In this epic tale, Julian Sancton unfolds a story of adventure and horror for the ages. As the Belgica's men teetered on the brink, de Gerlache relied increasingly on two young officers whose friendship had blossomed in captivity: the expedition's lone American, Dr. Frederick Cook--half genius, half con man--whose later infamy would overshadow his brilliance on the Belgica; and the ship's first mate, soon-to-be legendary Roald Amundsen, even in his youth the storybook picture of a sailor. Together, they would plan a last-ditch, nearly certain-to-fail escape from the ice--one that would either etch their names in history or doom them to a terrible fate at the ocean's bottom. Drawing on the diaries and journals of the Belgica's crew and with exclusive access to the ship's logbook, Sancton brings novelistic flair to a story of human extremes, one so remarkable that even today NASA studies it for research on isolation for future missions to Mars. Equal parts maritime thriller and gothic horror, Madhouse at the End of the Earth is an unforgettable journey into the deep"--
Subjects: Gerlache de Gomery, A. de (Adrien), commandant, 1866-1934.; Cook, Frederick Albert, 1865-1940.; Amundsen, Roald, 1872-1928.; Belgica (Ship);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Smiling Land All Around the Circle in My Newfoundland and Labrador [electronic resource] : by Doyle, Alan.aut; CloudLibrary;
From one of Canada's most beloved and celebrated Newfoundlanders comes a rollicking insider's guide to the province, told as only Alan Doyle can tell it. Few Canadian musicians are as synonymous with their home province as Alan Doyle is to his—and even fewer once worked as tour guides. In The Smiling Land, Alan reprises his tour-guiding role to welcome the rest of Canada to his home and take readers on an adventure: a freewheeling road trip through Newfoundland, its history, and its culture. From Fogo Island to the Southwest Coast, Labrador to Ferryland, and everywhere in between, Alan's Newfoundland awaits you. There are visits to windswept coastlines and towering crags, ancient Viking and Basque fishing settlements, and more lighthouses than you can shake a foghorn at. More recent settlements are also part of the itinerary, from burgeoning arts venues and communities to more humble but no less world-class locales, such as Foley's Shed, a jaunty live-music pub that—as its name suggests—happens to be in some guy named Foley's shed. Alan provides savvy insider tips for visitors to St. John's, like how to score fish and chips and a free ride by hopping into the delivery person's car as they drive your food to your desired destination. Or, for the aspiring rum smuggler visiting the Burin Peninsula, how to sneak bottles from the French territory of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon to the shores of Newfoundland. There are dolphin sightings, cliffside hikes among flocks of ocean-plunging puffins, and a pilgrimage to the home of the (late) great auk. And what tour of Newfoundland could be complete without a short history of what can best be described as "icebergs that look like things," an illustrious history that includes an exact replica of the Virgin Mary that once washed into St. John's harbour, and the more recent—and far less holy—"Dickie Berg," which made international headlines for looking like . . . well, not the Virgin Mary. Wildly entertaining, informative, and brimming with Alan's classic brand of storytelling and romping good fun, The Smiling Land is a celebration of Newfoundland—both its storied past and its ever-vibrant present.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Cultural Heritage; Personal Memoirs;
© 2025., Doubleday Canada,
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A Marriage at Sea A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck [electronic resource] : by Elmhirst, Sophie.aut; Calin, Marisa.nrt; CloudLibrary;
“Gird your loins and line up your couple’s therapist.” – New York Times Book Review podcast “This is nonfiction that reads like fiction – the best kind. Elmhirst’s retelling is a triumph, second only to the seemingly impossible feat of Maurice and Maralyn themselves. You won’t be able to put it down.” – USA Today “Such an emotionally vivid portrait of a couple in isolation that I was shocked it wasn’t fiction. How could a writer get so deeply into the minds of two real people in such extraordinary circumstances? … So brilliantly depicted.” – Elle, Best Books of Summer “A beautiful meditation on endurance, codependence, and the power of love. A dazzling book.” – Patrick Radden Keefe “An enthralling, engrossing story of survival and the resilience of the human spirit.” —Bill Bryson The electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked at sea: a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership stretched to its limits. Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner, awkward and obsessive; she’s charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away? Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But in June 1972, Maurice and Maralyn set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves. What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can’t run away from themselves. Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea pairs an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Love & Romance; Women;
© 2025., Penguin Random House,
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The message / by Coates, Ta-Nehisi,author.;
"Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories - our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking - expose and distort our realities. The first of the book's three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist - and named for Nubian pharaoh - Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the "steampunk" city of "old traditions and new machinery," meeting with strangers and dining with local writers who quiz him in French about African American politics. But everywhere he goes he feels as if he's in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind, the pan-African homeland he was raised to believe was the origin and destiny for all black people. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and touches the ocean that carried his ancestors away in chains - and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream. Back in the USA he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he explores a different mythology, this one enforced on its subjects by the state. He enters the world of the teacher whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates's own books and discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed and even radicalized by the stories they discovered in the "racial reckoning" of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths and stories of the community - a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over the its public squares. In Palestine, the longest of the essays, he discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we've accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians - the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him - and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Coates, Ta-Nehisi; African American journalists; Journalists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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