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juushikaTitle: Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition
Author: Owen Beattie and John Geiger
Narrator: Liam Gerrard
Published: Tantor Media, 2019 (1987)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 544,865
Text Number: 2025
Read Because: Franklin's boys too got very cold, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Beattie lead modern excavations and research into the lost Franklin expedition, and pioneered lead poisoning as an explanation particularly for the poor decision-making that occurred when the ships were abandoned; I understand that theory has since been devalued, but his underlying argument holds: the expedition's loss, like all historical polar exploration tragedies, had an inherently complex cause, in which food, its quality and deficiencies as much as its availability, was an important factor with a cascading effect on decision-making and health.
...Which doesn't mean I'm particularly enamored of this book. The mix of historical context and third-person memoir (what a baffling choice! was it more common at the time of publication?) leads to uneven pacing, skimming the approximate details of the expedition and preceding attempts on the Northwest Passage and then grinding to a halt to land in the specificities of Beattie's research, concluding with a finality that's no longer satisfying. I wouldn't make this my only book on the subject; but I'm not, so!
Author: Owen Beattie and John Geiger
Narrator: Liam Gerrard
Published: Tantor Media, 2019 (1987)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 544,865
Text Number: 2025
Read Because: Franklin's boys too got very cold, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Beattie lead modern excavations and research into the lost Franklin expedition, and pioneered lead poisoning as an explanation particularly for the poor decision-making that occurred when the ships were abandoned; I understand that theory has since been devalued, but his underlying argument holds: the expedition's loss, like all historical polar exploration tragedies, had an inherently complex cause, in which food, its quality and deficiencies as much as its availability, was an important factor with a cascading effect on decision-making and health.
...Which doesn't mean I'm particularly enamored of this book. The mix of historical context and third-person memoir (what a baffling choice! was it more common at the time of publication?) leads to uneven pacing, skimming the approximate details of the expedition and preceding attempts on the Northwest Passage and then grinding to a halt to land in the specificities of Beattie's research, concluding with a finality that's no longer satisfying. I wouldn't make this my only book on the subject; but I'm not, so!
