Review by Choice Review
The events of the two voyages of Vitus Bering, a Dane sailing in the service of imperial Russia who discovered Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, are retold principally from the English translations of the memoirs of two participants: Sven Waxell, the Swedish first officer, and Georg Steller, a German naturalist. The first part of the book, covering the inception of the Great Northern Expedition by Peter the Great until the end of Bering's first inconclusive voyage, suffers from Brown's sometimes confusing chronology of the first expedition's vast logistical problems and the details of the bureaucratic quagmire that spawned it. But the last two-thirds, recounting the incidents of Bering's second voyage, a decade-long undertaking resulting in significant geographic and natural history discoveries and ending with the agonizing winter his ship's crew spent on Bering Island, becomes a focused, interesting summary in which Steller stands out as the major character. The book ends with an adroit summing up of the post-expedition history of events that Bering's voyages set in motion, which had huge consequences for the wildlife and peoples native to Alaska and its eventual acquisition by the US. Summing Up: Recommended. General, public, and undergraduate collections. --Robert M. Bryce, formerly, independent scholar
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Bown (White Eskimo: Knud Rasmussen's Fearless Journey into the Heart of the Arctic, 2015) judiciously portrays the explorer Vitus Bering during his North Pacific voyages of the 1700s, including the First Kamchatka Expedition, which established that a strait (the Bering, naturally) divides Siberia from Alaska. Bering intended to discover and map while on the Great Northern Expedition, but his superiors sought to colonize eastern Siberia and northwestern America if Bering could find it. After years of arduous preparation, Bering set sail in 1741. On board were naturalist Georg Steller and officer Sven Waxell, on whose journals Bown relies as he chronicles Bering touching land in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, where Steller recorded much fauna that is now extinct, and the inexorable descent into disaster as scurvy laid low the crew and they wrecked on an island where Bering left his bones and his name. Steller and Waxell rallied the survivors and brought their tale back to Russia; now Bown brings it to us in this excellent work of historical reconstruction that will enamor fans of the Age of Exploration.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Bown (White Eskimo) asserts that Captain Vitus Bering (1681-1741) and the Great Northern Expedition should be regarded as one of the world's greatest explorers and expeditions. In the 1720s, Peter the Great wanted to prove Russia's might by sending surveyors across Siberia to the Kamchatka Peninsula and onward to America. The journey was an effort to gather cartographic, geographic, and cultural information, while exerting political power over fur-flung territories. Bering was chosen to head the expedition for his logistical and administrative skills and experience with the difficult land route across Siberia. A group left St. Petersburg in 1733 and reached Kamchatka in 1740. Two ships were constructed and 150 men sailed east in 1741. Lacking fresh water, one of the ships was beached on a remote Aleutian island where 31 men, including Bering, died from scurvy. The blue foxes that inhabited the island were both a blessing (food) and a curse (thievery). Survivors constructed a smaller ship from the wreckage and sailed home in 1742. To chronicle this epic adventure, the author uses official Russian documents, ship logs, journals, and correspondence. VERDICT Bown's readable history should elevate Bering into the top tier of explorers. For fans of adventure, exploration, and discovery.-Margaret -Atwater-Singer, Univ. of Evansville Lib., IN © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
That Vitus Bering (1681-1741) sailed into the Bering Strait is no secret, but few outside Russia know how he did it.Even veteran history buffs will blanch as Canadian historian Bown (White Eskimo: Knud Rasmussen's Fearless Journey into the Heart of the Arctic, 2015, etc.) recounts the spectacular, often gruesome details of Bering's massive expedition. A handsome, healthy Dane, Bering "was one of the many talented foreigners attracted to Russian service by Peter the Great's expansion of the Russian Navy." By 1731, he had already led a Far East expedition that returned with tantalizing findings. Russia's government immediately planned a second expedition, which was far more ambitious and featured impossibly complex goals that ignored the painful lessons of the first. Readers will share the author's amazement at what followed. In 1733, more than 1,000 explorers, soldiers, scientists, and craftsmen left St. Petersburg with tons of supplies, taking three years to trundle across 6,000 miles of Russia, quarreling, suffering, and wreaking havoc over roadless, thinly populated Siberia as they commandeered food, horses, and laborers along the way. Reaching the Pacific Ocean, the expedition built several oceangoing vessels. One group sailed south and made Russia's first contact with Japan. Another, under Bering's direction, sailed through the strait that eventually bore his name, confirming that Russia was not connected to America and reaching Alaska (it turns out he was not the first). Shipwrecked on an isolated island, Bering and many crew died before the remainder straggled back. In familiar fashion, Russia's autocratic leaders suppressed the new geographic and scientific information, although it gradually trickled out over the decades. Luckily for readers, diaries, letters, and official reports provide Bown ample material for a gripping account of "the most extensive scientific expedition in history," whose impressive results were certainly matched by its duration and miseries. A rapidly paced story of adventure "to be appreciated as a reminder of the power of nature and of the struggle and triumph over disasterand of the powerful urge to persevere and return home." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
