The Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica (Paperback)

~ (Author) "GETTING TO ANTARCTICA, whether by airplane or by ship, is often uncomfortable and always dangerous..." (more)
Key Phrases: sealing beaches, crystal desert, mysticete whales, Southern Ocean, Admiralty Bay, South Georgia (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In The Crystal Desert David Campbell weaves together travelogue gathered from his many visits to the wind-blasted continent of Antarctica, along with natural history, oceanography, and accounts of the tortured attempts of earlier exploratory missions "in an alien environment, beyond the edge of the habitable earth." He's a gifted writer with an especially fine hand at making his readers feel right at home in a place very few of us will ever get to see. Armchair travelers couldn't ask for a better book, no matter what the season. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

With a poet's ear and a scientist's eye, biologist Campbell brings the Antarctic to vivid, teeming life in this eloquent, comprehensive natural and social history of the ice-clad continent below the Southern Ocean. Over the course of three austral summers in the 1980s, Campell explored life "beyond the edge of the habitable earth," spending the last visit, in 1987, at a Brazilian research station--nicknamed Little Copacabana--on Admiralty Bay studying parasites in seals, fish and crustaceans. Punctuated with his personal responses (in the clarity of light after a sleet storm, he notes, "It is as if I have suddenly acquired the vision of an eagle"), early chapters detail local geology and botany, and chronicle the frenetic summer activity of penguins and seals; skuas, terns and albatrosses; plankton and krill. Accounts of the area's discovery and its exploitation in the seal- and whale-hunting expeditions that thrived 100 years ago are enlivened with reference to letters, diaries and other first-hand reports. Polished and passionate, with an immediate quality, this geographic portrait earned Campbell Houghton Mifflin's Literary Fellowship. Author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (May 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618219218
• ISBN-13: 978-0618219216
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #208,486 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but the author isn't big on introspection, June 1, 2003

By	Scott FS (Sacramento, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Since I've visited Antarctica, and enjoyed its haunting, indifferent beauty as well as the spectacular wildlife, I was interested in reading an account of someone who had lived, studied, and conducted research there.

Campbell's strength is writing about the science, the wildlife, the extremes of weather and of living in a difficult place. His weakness is his utter lack of self-analysis. He berates the tourists who come to this place (does he think he owns the Antarctic area himself?), and laments the loss of microscopic and macroscopic life that is lost when the loutish tourist dares step on the fragile landscape, yet he is blissfully unaware of the far greater damage he does to the ecosystem when he powers up the hills to work on the weatherstation, and when he pulls up marine creatures and watches them burst, dying, under his microscope.

I guess anything is fair game when done under the guise of 'science', but woe be to the ordinary person who dares to learn about one of the farthest reaches of the planet.

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not About Antarctica, October 1, 2003

By	John C. Brewer "John B." (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Crystal Desert Summers In Antarctica (Hardcover)

This was a disappointing read, mainly because it isn't about Antarctica, but about King George Island. Like writing a book about North America from research conducted on Cuba. Yes, Cuba is part of North America, but... If you want information on Antarctica, look elsewhere. Why he named it "Crystal Desert" is beyond me because there is NOTHING on the ice cap. Secondly, Campbell, who may or may not be a competent biologist, spends far to much time grinding his environmental axe. For some reason, he thinks he and other academicians are the only people with the right to go to Antarctica, making numerous disparaging comments about tourism throughout the text. Moreover, he seems to have a major problem with males - be they human, sperm whale, or elephant seal, espousing traits such as "machismo" and other derogatory human emotions to these animals simply because they are larger than the females. And finally, he spends the entire final third of the book expounding on the horrors of the seal and whale hunts that decimated the populations of these magnificant animals. Unfortunate, definately. But the book is supposed to be about Antarctica - not a treatise on over-sealing and over-whaling by people from another period in time. It does have some good descriptions of Admiralty Bay on King George Island - mainly from a biological perspective, but overall, it was a waste of time.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A good (not great) read on Antarctica if you are going there., November 17, 2006

By	James O. Jygrieve (Catania, Italy (ex-pat)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: CRYSTAL DESERT CL (Hardcover)

There may be a growing body of literature on Antarctica, but let's face it: about 80% of it is about Amundsen, Scott, or Shackleton. That's fine, but if you're reading in preparation for a trip to Antarctica, you want more. Campbell's book is a very readable albeit superficial overview of the wildlife and physical landscape you're likely to encounter. I agree with other reviewers that Campbell comes across as stuck-up, and I do take exception to his disparaging of tourists, since my experience has been that Antarctic tourists tend to be very environmentally respectful. I recommend the book because its insights and information did enhance my enjoyment of Antarctica and the South Shetlands.