I love a horrific tale of hardship in the cold remote regions of the world, and this one certainly fits the bill. I often get through one of these stories thinking, "Haven't I read about this before," but not this time. I had a vague idea of who William Barents was, and that there was a sea named after him, but this story seemed new and fresh.

Most of the dramatic stories of survival in the arctic regions come out of the 19th century, but this one stretches way back to the late 1500s, as the newly rising Dutch empire was seeking new markets and opportunities for trade and colonization in the east. One approach, championed by William Barents, was to travel across the north of Asia, a possible shortcut to the far east as compared to the longer trip around Africa. In the process of his three voyages, Barents helped discover Spitzbergen, Bear Island, and Nova Zembla (Novaya Zemlya). It was this last location that ended up being the stage for his longest arctic struggle as he and a group of Dutch sailors were frozen in there over the winter of 1596-97.

The horrors these ill-prepared and poorly clothed sailors endured were incredible. The unbelievable cold, storms, ice, scurvy, months of darkness and regular visits by hungry polar bears nearly did them in, but somehow they held it together. And as the spring approached with their ice-filled ship useless, they focused on rigging up some small boats to attempt to sail home. And that's when their trouble really began. I probably would have just laid down and died way before these men did.

While this book is nominally about Barents, it's really about the whole group, most of who remain anonymous throughout. Their teamwork, compassion and faith enabled them to pull together for this arduous journey. It's a great story, and Pitzer does a great job of telling it.

So. Many. Polar. Bears.

An okay, but not quite even good, polar history. Because the evidence on Barents and his voyages is so very fragmentary, the author pads the narrative with innumerable tangents on things that are also cold, or dangerous, or also happened really far north. A leaner, more focused, work would have been a more honest, and more satisfying, read.

A potentially great story not very well told. I was particularly puzzled by the choice of consistently using the name Nova Zembla, rather than what I thought was the much more established Novaya Zemlya. An explanation of the choice would at least be helpful.

Excellent narrative nonfiction of Danish explorer William Barents’ three voyages attempting to discover an Arctic route to China (in the 1500s, there was a theory that the Arctic was a warm, open sea), culminating in a winter iced in off the coast of Nova Zembla. Includes really interesting contextual notes about how this voyage/disaster differed from other notable polar expeditions and trials.