To the edges of the earth 1909, the race for the three poles, and the climax of the age of exploration.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, an entwined narrative of the most adventurous year of all time, when three expeditions simultaneously raced to the top, bottom, and heights of the world. As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration-set at the world's frozen extremes-lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called "Third Pole," the pole of altitude, located in unexplored heights of the Himalaya. Before the calendar tur...