Ninety North—Ninety South

For four hundred years after- Columbus, young men went West. More recently, they have turned North and South. But it now looks as though only Up and Down are left to the really enterprising, for in 1958 both the poles of our planet were transversed by heretofore unventured means: in January, a Commonwealth party using only tractors and dog teams crossed the entire Antarctic continent via the South Pole, and six months later, in August, the American atomic-powered submarine Nautilus passed under the ice cap at the North Pole. The leaders of both expeditions have since made their reports to the general public, and if you read them as I did, on successive evenings tucked in bed, you may feel a little decrepit, but you will not be bored.

The first of these books, Nautilus 90 North (World, $3.95) represents the lesser achievement. In the first place, though signed by Commander William R. Anderson, the text bears too many signs of its collaborator, Clay Blair Jr. A “ghost” is perfectly admissible, but it seems a pity that a story which is so full of intrinsic interest should have been inflated with such stale hot air as this:

RP

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Robert Phelps

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For four hundred years after- Columbus, young men went West. More recently, they have turned North and South. But it now looks as though only Up and Down are left to the really enterprising, for in 1958 both the poles of our planet were transversed by heretofore unventured means: in January, a Commonwealth party using only tractors and dog teams crossed the entire Antarctic continent via the South Pole, and six months later, in August, the American atomic-powered submarine Nautilus passed under the ice cap at the North Pole. The leaders of both expeditions have since made their reports to the general public, and if you read them as I did, on successive evenings tucked in bed, you may feel a little decrepit, but you will not be bored.

The first of these books, Nautilus 90 North (World, $3.95) represents the lesser achievement. In the first place, though signed by Commander William R. Anderson, the text bears too many signs of its collaborator, Clay Blair Jr. A “ghost” is perfectly admissible, but it seems a pity that a story which is so full of intrinsic interest should have been inflated with such stale hot air as this: