The Crystal Desert

In The Crystal Desert David Campbell weaves together travelogue gathered from his many visits to the wind-blasted continent of Antarctica along with natural history oceanography and accounts of the tortured attempts of earlier exploratory missions in an alien environment beyond the edge of the habitable earth. He''s a gifted writer with an especially fine hand at making his readers feel right at home in a place very few of us will ever get to see. Armchair travelers couldn''t ask for a better book no matter what the season.THE CRYSTAL DESERT: SUMMERS IN ANTARCTICA is the story of life''s tenacity on the coldest of Earth''s continents. It tells of the explorers who discovered Antarctica of the whalers and sealers who despoiled it and of the scientists who are deciphering its mysteries. In beautiful lucid prose David G. Campbell chronicles the desperately short summers on the Antarctic Peninsula. He presents a fascinating portrait of the evolution of life in Antarctica and also of the evolution of the continent itself.