Northwest Passage : The Quest for an Arctic Route to the East

London: Blandford, 1991. 9.25" wide by 12.25" tall. A bright, shiny, clean, square, tight copy. Sharp corners. The Dust Jacket is NOT price clipped (£16.95). No owner's name or bookplate. No remainder mark. Pages are fresh, crisp, and unmarked. No underlining. No highlighting. No margin notes. Well illustrated with maps, prints, drawings, and photographs, many in full-color. Bound in the original blue boards, lettered in shiny silver on the spine. From the Dust Jacket: "The quest for the Northwest Passage was one of the greatest navigational challenges and an international obsession for early mariners. For 500 years explorers, spurred by the promise of wealth or prestige, risked their lives to find a commercial route to the markets of the Orient. Early notions of geography were primitive and sometimes flawed… The European perception of the Arctic as a sublime, beautiful and inspiring place left explorers ill prepared for the ice-choked sea and frozen landmass, temperatures as low as -65 ° F (-54° C) or white-outs, mirages and mock suns... Beginning in 1497 with John Cabot, a steady succession of explorers from different countries tried and failed in the attempt. It was not until 1906 that the Northwest Passage was successfully navigated by Roald Amundsen... [This book] chronicles the successes and failures of legendary explorers, including Martin Frobisher, John Davis, William Edward Parry, and John Franklin. Five maps trace the routes of the most important explorers, and many rare archival prints and photographs depict the Arctic as seen through adventurer's eyes. Over 40 color photographs by Mike Beedell... give a contemporary view of the region's wildlife, landscape and people." . First Printing of the First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine condition/Very Good+ dust jacket. Illus. by Beedell, Mike (photography). (viii), 152pp.