Andrea Pitzer is a journalist whose writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, Outside, The Daily Beast, Vox, and Slate, among other publications. She has authored two previous books, One Long Night and The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov--both critically acclaimed. She received an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1994, and later studied at MIT and Harvard as an affiliate of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism. She grew up in West Virginia and currently lives with her family near Washington, DC. Icebound is her most recent work.
"A fascinating modern telling of Barents's expeditions....Ms.
Pitzer presents a compelling narrative situated in the context of
Dutch imperial ambition. She writes vividly about the 'unnerving
isolation' of venturing north and east of Scandinavia into
uncharted waters."
--Wall Street Journal
"A gripping adventure tale that deserves an honored place in the
long bookshelf of volumes dealing with arctic shipwrecks, winter
ordeals, and survival struggles."
--Boston Globe
"A resonant meditation on human ingenuity, resilience, and
hope."
--The New Yorker
"Andrea Pitzer does a fine job of telling this gripping adventure,
painting a convincing portrait of an obsessive who put his life on
the line for glory and knowledge--and succumbed."
--The Observer (UK)
"Richly descriptive...The real grip of the book lies in the
horrendous dangers and hardships endured by Barents and his
shipmates, and the determination with which they met them... For
these explorers, it was as if they had visited another planet, a
hostile place of alien creatures and otherworldly horrors."
--Minneapolis Star Tribune
"The expedition's highlight reel included everything a polar fan
could want: hand-to-hand combat with polar bears and walruses;
scurvy and vitamin A poisoning; asphyxiation by carbon dioxide;
frostbite, keelhauling and hangings; plus the sighting of a rare
atmospheric optical phenomenon called a parhelion...Pitzer writes
with care about the Arctic landscape Barents encountered...A
reminder that there was once a time when things were unknown."
--New York Times Book Review
"The name of William Barents isn't that familiar to us these days
beyond perhaps a line of type on your atlas... but this
enthralling, elemental and literally spine-chilling epic of courage
and endurance should change all that."
--Daily Mail (UK)
"A masterful re-creation of a desperate fight for survival [that]
takes us back nearly half a millennium and plunks us down in a
vividly realized world...More than just another book about a
disastrous sea voyage, this is a richly evocative story about a
particular period in the history of exploration. Icebound deserves
a place beside such classics as Alfred Lansing's Endurance:
Shackleton's Incredible Voyage and Roland Huntford's The Last Place
on Earth: Scott and Amundson's Race to the South Pole."
--Booklist (starred review)
"Andrea Pitzer accomplishes for William Barents what the explorer
could not do for himself: rescue his amazing life from the grip of
the Arctic and centuries of hagiography. The Barents who appears in
Pitzer's spyglass seems impressively close to the actual man:
intensely bold, highly skilled, and catastrophically wrong."
--P.J. Capelotti, author of The Greatest Show in the Arctic
"Dramatic and dire...[the men]fight off polar bears that rear up
from nowhere, attacking until they are slaughtered or driven away.
The ship tacks endlessly and desperately to escape floating
'mountains of steel'...Ms. Pitzer's descriptions of the region
sing."
--The Economist
"In Icebound Andrea Pitzer has accomplished something unique--she
presents the daily lives of the early Dutch Arctic explorers with
such precision and clarity that the reader becomes as immersed in
the rawness of their experiences as one could ever imagine. Through
unflinching detail, she describes the struggle for survival faced
by three separate expeditions seeking a northeast passage from
Europe to China (one of those voyages culminating in being marooned
for months in the frozen north). Without sentimentality, she
describes the perseverance and selfless sacrifice of the men
involved, which allows a glimpse into the true nature of human
courage. This is a book you will not want to put down, except to
catch your breath."
--William E. Glassley, author of A Wilder Time: Notes From a
Geologist at the Edge of the Greenland Ice
"Narratives of frozen beards in polar hinterlands never lose their
appeal. Most of the good stories have been told, but in Icebound
Andrea Pitzer fills a gap, at least for the popular reader in
English, with the story of the 16th-century Dutch mariner William
Barents....Elegant."
--The Spectator
"Pitzer's narrative vividly conveys tension and terror. A
meticulously researched history of maritime tragedy."
--Kirkus Reviews
"An enchantment. Pitzer expertly draws the reader into landscapes
so unfamiliar and unsettling that they may as well be stolen from
science fiction....[Features] ordeals that--to today's readers--can
seem nearly unimaginable."
--Steve Silberman, author, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and
the Future of Neurodiversity
"An epic tale of exploration, daring, and tragedy told by a fine
historian--and a wonderful writer."
--Peter Frankopan, internationally bestselling author of The Silk
Roads: A New History of the World
"Buried in snow, besieged by ice, and hunted by ravenous polar
bears, explorer William Barents and his Dutch shipmates, seeking a
northern trade route to the Far East, found themselves trapped in
an epic battle for survival in the unknown, ice-locked Arctic.
Andrea Pitzer's worthy and superb account keeps us enthralled to
the last chilling word."
--Dean King, nationally bestselling author of Skeletons on the
Zahara and The Feud
"Fascinating, bizarre, and very human...A riveting account of lives
drawn into a world that seems at once dream and nightmare."
--Blair Braverman, author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube:
Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North
"Gives readers a new understanding of the phrase uncharted
territory.... Methodically researched and elegantly told."
--Beth Macy, New York Times bestselling author of Dopesick:
Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America
"Long before Bering or Amundsen, long before Franklin or
Shackleton, there was William Barents, in many ways the greatest
polar explorer of them all. In this engrossing narrative of the Far
North, enriched by her own adventurous sojourns in the Arctic,
Andrea Pitzer brings Barents' three harrowing expeditions to vivid
life--while giving us fascinating insights into one of history's
most intrepid navigators."
--Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of In the
Kingdom of Ice
"Page after page, Pitzer puts you inside one of the greatest
adventures you'll ever encounter. Beyond thrilling. Beyond
enthralling. I found this a tale so involving that I simply
couldn't put it down."
--Martin W. Sandler, author of the National Book Award finalist
1919 and The Impossible Rescue
"Stunning...shines with the glitter of sun reflecting off polar
ice, auroral light shimmering in the night sky, and--mostly--the
sheer, stubborn power of the undaunted human spirit."
--Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Poison Squad:
One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of
the Twentieth Century
"The bone-chilling tale of a legendary journey in which survival
depended on leadership, teamwork, and superhuman endurance--as well
as the ability to outpace and out-battle icebergs and polar
bears....A masterwork of narrative nonfiction."
--Mitchell Zuckoff, New York Times bestselling author of Frozen in
Time and Fall and Rise
"Who knew that William Barents's 16th-century journeys so strongly
influenced the great 19th-century arctic expeditions? Andrea
Pitzer's visceral, thrilling account is full of such tantalizing
surprises, a delight on every level."
--Andrea Barrett, National Book Award-winning author of Ship Fever
and The Voyage of the Narwhal
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