In the spirit of bestselling event narratives In the dominion of Ice, within the center of the Sea, and The misplaced urban of Z, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Edward J. Larson's To the perimeters of the Earth brings to lifestyles the climax of the age of exploration: within the yr 1909 expeditions to the Arctic, Antarctica, and Himalaya driven human accomplishment to the extremes and set records for altitude and the farthest north and south.

In 1909, 3 bold expeditions driven to the perimeters of the globe, bringing nearby, for the 1st time, a whole accounting of all of the earth’s floor. In January, Douglas Mawson, as a part of Ernest Shackleton’s Nimrod excursion to Antarctica, grew to become the 1st guy to arrive the South Magnetic Pole. quickly after, Shackleton himself set a brand new farthest south list in pursuit of the Geographic South Pole. In April, American Robert Peary, with Matthew Henson, claimed to be the 1st to arrive the North Pole. And within the Himalayas—the so-called "Third Pole," the pole of altitude— a crew led via mythical mountaineer and rushing Italian Prince Luigi Amedeo, the Duke of Abruzzi, reached 24,600 toes, setting a world altitude list that may stand for a generation.

Drawing on either archival and on-the-ground study (he lived for 2 weeks in Shackleton's Antarctic hut), Larson interweaves the tales of those 3 expeditions into one dazzling event narrative that illuminates the spirit of the age.