The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage [Paperback]

After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying to do since the sixteenth century: find the fabled Northwest Passage. For the next thirty-five years the British Admiralty sent out expedition after expedition to probe the ice-bound waters of the Canadian Arctic in search of a route, and then, after 1845, to find Sir John Franklin, the Royal Navy hero who led the last of these Admiralty expeditions. Enthralling and often harrowing, The Man Who Ate His Boots captures the glory and the folly of this ultimately tragic enterprise.

“Exotic and thrilling. . . . One of those books that can keep a reader inside for an entire weekend.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Thoughtful, compassionate and meticulously researched . . . offers readers a vivid, compelling, ultimately heartbreaking history of Arctic exploration.”
—The Oregonian

“A fascinating, at times thrilling, narrative.”
—The Seattle Times
 
“Brandt is a superb and profound writer who leads us through a tale of such hardship you feel as if you’ve been aboard ship with them. It’s no small feat to use a bit of history to illuminate the future, but Brandt pulls it off. This is narrative history at its absolute gripping best.”
—Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and War

“[Brandt is a] powerful storyteller, vividly re-creating the most dramatic episodes of the nineteenth century.”
—Washington Post
 
“A robust new history. . . . Brandt tells his story wl6