The very best writing on the Antarctic, from James Cook's eighteenth-century assertion that 'no man will ever venture further than I have done' to Lynne Cox's description of her epic, icy swim in the twenty-first century - 32 first-hand accounts of men and women challenging one of the Earth's last true wildernesses.

Here you will find both legendary tales of heroism and startling contemporary accounts of the impact of global warming on the Earth's sole undeveloped continent, including:

'Dog Days' by Robert Falcon Scott

'The Loss of the Endurance' by Ernest Shackleton.

'Alone' by Richard E Byrd.

'The Killer under the Water' by Gareth Wood.

'Melting Point' by David Helvarg.

'Swimming to Antarctica' by Lynne Cox.