Richard Sale is one of the world's leading Arctic scholars and explorers and a professional glaciologist. He has written widely on Polar history, exploration and wildlife (including Arctic Odyssey), and in 2003 won the Outdoor Book of the Year award for To the Ends of the Earth. This book is the culmination of a lifetime's work in the field, and with 275,000 words and around 500 illustrations it will be, as its title indicates, the complete story of a region that is daily attracting more attention from politicians and ordinary people alike, and is annually becoming more open to tourism as the end of the cold war, and the onset of global warming makes access easier, and more commercially attractive. With its stunning photographs and authoritative text this book will be the basic resource for anyone interested in one of the world's most fascinating and little known regions.