This book looks at American Arctic exploration from the 1850s to 1906 through the opposite end of the telescope, considering changing perceptions and receptions at home as a reflection of shifts in American cultural values. Following the recent works of Janet Browne, Felix Driver and Helen Rozwadowski, the patrons and the public play almost as big a part as the explorers themselves in Robinson's narrative. Robinson charts a shift from science, discovery and commercial potential as ostensible justifications for Arctic exploration towards newspaper sales, anticomercialism and the race to be first to the North Pole. In the process supposed evidence of manliness, honour and courage is replaced, via evidence of cannibalism, to charges of fraud and dishonour leading to the memorable accusation from a New York senator, about the American contenders for the Pole position, that “[Frederick] Cook is a liar and a gentleman, and [Robert] Peary is neither” (157).

Constant through Robinson's narrative is the notion that Arctic exploration offered Americans both a distraction from internal conflicts and the possibility of unifying pride in an external reputation. In the 1850s, Robinson argues, the combination of a scientific sensibility and moral character, exemplified by Elisha Kent Kane, “became important means of social evaluation as other measures of class status such as wealth and lineage had begun to break down” (41). In the 1860s Isaac Hayes presented himself as a cultivated scientist, whilst his rival Charles Hall chose to impress popular audiences by living with the “Eskimos.” By the 1880s stories of suffering and scandal sold books and newspapers, whilst scientists realized that little data had actually been returned. After a brief experiment with an airship in 1906, the race for the Pole on foot became a fight to dominate the urban lecture circuit as the most rugged American battling the new frontier. Cook's fraudulent claim initially reaped the new wealth available, whilst Peary's going native in his attempt attracted a new interest in indigenous people. This 1909 controversy ignited an “Artcic fever,” serving its original dual functions of distraction and national pride, that Robinson argues extends to the current US space programme. Robinson's detailed research and social analysis sustain his thesis that “the Arctic presented a faraway stage on which explorers played out dramas that were unfolding at home” (3).