Content area
GEOGRAPHY & TRAVEL * Fox, William L. Terra Antarctica: Looking into the Emptiest Continent. Oct. 2005. 364p. illus. index. Trinity Univ., $35 (1-59534-015-7). 919.89.
Full text
GEOGRAPHY & TRAVEL * Fox, William L. Terra Antarctica: Looking into the Emptiest Continent. Oct. 2005. 364p. illus. index. Trinity Univ., $35 (1-59534-015-7). 919.89.
So pristine is Antarctica, and so spare is its ecosystem, it has become a living laboratory for scientists studying everything from the icy continent's microbial life to cosmic radiation. Thanks to the National Science Foundation program, in which author Fox participated, it is also a sublime studio for artists and writers. Fox became fascinated with how visitors to Antarctica, a land wholly unlike the realm in which humans evolved, are baffled by mirages and "cognitive dissonance." The continent's "monolithic expanses of flat white ice" confound our perceptual mechanism. Fox vividly describes his own disorienting sensory experiences while trekking across the world's largest desert and offers a fresh and enlightening history of the two disciplines have that enabled us to "see" otherwise incomprehensible places: cartography and landscape art. This leads to intriguing portraits of Antarctica's first explorers and the gifted men who mapped, drew, painted, and photographed its spectacular and daunting vistas, staggering accomplishments Fox compares to today's intrepid Antarctic science and art in a lively report on life at McMurdo Station and the South Pole. Thoughtful and enjoyable on many fronts, Fox's uniquely fashioned chronicle of Antarctica brings into sharper focus the crucial symbiosis between art and science.-Donna Seaman
Copyright Booklist Publications Oct 1, 2005