Customer Reviews

Searching for the Franklin Expedition: The Arctic Journal of Robert Randolph Carter

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This could have been a great book. The story of a daring attempt to find polar explorer Sir John Franklin (analogous in importance today to finding lost astronauts) based on the personal journal of an officer in the rescue expedition's company, Randolph Carter. So many interesting aspects could have been explored: the collegial but competitive feeling between the ill-equipped US expedition and the advanced Royal Navy counterpart; the escapist focus polar exploration enjoyed on the eve of the Civil War; Carter's personal evolution. Instead, the author merely wraps Carter's Spartan journal in a perfunctory introduction & summary. Drama aside, this is no scholarly reference either. Not one map to help the poor reader trace the expedition's progress; no helpful amplifying commentary that could have helped the reader put Carter's often esoteric colloquial references into context. A work of FICTION (Yoyage of the Narwhal, Barrett) is a more interesting and scholarly work about this subject.

This could have been a great book. The story of a daring attempt to find polar explorer Sir John Franklin (analogous in importance today to finding lost astronauts) based on the personal journal of an officer in the rescue expedition's company, R. R. Carter. So many interesting aspects could have been explored: the collegial but competitive feeling between the ill-equipped US expedition and the advanced Royal Navy counterpart; the escapist focus polar exploration enjoyed on the eve of the Civil War; Carter's personal evolution. Instead, the author merely wraps Carter's Spartan journal in a perfunctory introduction & summary. Drama aside, this is no scholarly reference either. Not one map to help the poor reader trace the expedition's progress; no helpful amplifying commentary that could have helped the reader put Carter's often esoteric colloquial references into context. A work of FICTION (Yoyage of the Narwhal, Barrett) is a more interesting and scholarly work about this subject.