My attainment of the pole being the record of the expedition that first reached the boreal center 1907-1909 with the final summary of the polar controversy
New York: Polar Publishing Co., 1911. First edition, large 8vo, pp. xx, [2], 604; frontispiece portrait of Cook, and 49 photographic illustrations on 31 plates, plus other illustrations. and a map in the text; hinges starting, else very good in original pictorial brown cloth. This is the narrative of Cook's supposed journey to the pole which he claims to have reached nearly a year before his rival, Robert E. Peary. Ironically, Cook had been the surgeon on Peary's Arctic expedition of 1891-92. Controversy surrounded this, as well as earlier expeditions of Cook's, and credit for reaching the pole was generally given to Peary, until he, too, was discredited. Credit is now generally given to the Minnesota insurance salesman, Ralph Plaisted (1927-2008) and his three companions, Walt Pederson, Gerry Pitzl and Jean-Luc Bombardier, who were the first to succeed in a surface traverse across the ice in a Ski-Doo snowmobile (a then-novel invention of Canada's Bombardier Company) to the North Pole on 19 April 1968, making the first confirmed surface conquest of the Pole. Arctic Bibliography 3389. Item #61110
Price: $250.00
