Antarctica - Jonathan Scott

A beautiful large-format history of a surprisingly fragile Eden.

'A journey to Antarctica changes your life. It forces you to take a long hard look at the state of our planet and its last wild places.Antarctica promises man the chance to do something that he has never done before - commit to the preservation of a vast wilderness, simply because it exists.'

Best known for their African safaris, Jonathan and Angela Scott's other passion lies in their travels to Antarctica. When the sun sets at the end of a hot day in the Mara-Serengeti, they long for the austere and beautiful landscape of the Antarctic.

A journey to the southern ocean offers an array of emblematic creatures - penguins, albatrosses, seals and whales. A spectacular number of birds flock to the breeding colonies there each year, and whales gather in the southern oceans to feed during the Antarctic summer making it the perfect location for whale watching.

But the recent boom in tourism is only the latest in a long history of man's attempt to own and exploit this icy wilderness. Weaving together the discovery stories of explorers such as Cook, Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen, with the ecological stories of whaling, mining and the greenhouse effect, the Scotts reveal man's impact on this remote and austere sanctuary for wildlife.