Lost in the Arctic

the long version

This collection of 30 adventure essays by celebrated Arctic enthusiast Millman features 17 new pieces along with those that have appeared elsewhere: in his previous books (Last Places; Northern Latitudes; An Evening Among Headhunters), magazines (Smithsonian, Atlantic Monthly, Islands) and as introductions to other works. Brought together in this way, these varied pieces reveal that Millman specializes in unsolved mysteries, odd myths, and extremely dangerous situations, and the stories he recounts are always highly amusing and unpredictable: he encounters Kodiak bears in Alaska, fortune-tellers on Yap, and leeches on Sarawak, to name just a few incidents. In the strongest pieces he pays homage to other explorers and adventurers, such as Henry Hudson, George Street, Harry Radford, Hassoldt Davis, John Cowper Powys, and Maurice Wilson. The fiction pieces interspersed among the travel narratives are somewhat weaker and not as well written as the nonfiction, a genre in which Millman clearly has few equals.