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.