Books like Big Dead Place

This is a gripping account of expeditioner Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the youngest members of Scott's team, recorded the experience of this adventure gone disastrously wrong. Despite the horrors that Scott and his men faced along the way, Cherry's account is filled with stories of resilience, belief in the human spirit, and to persevere in the face of adversity, no matter the cost. Through frostbitten flesh, teeth chattering so hard they spontaneously shatter in the cold of the air, to sweat freezing the instant it emerges from the pores – this is not for the faint-hearted. Nonetheless it is certainly one of the most inspiring accounts of developing self-belief and pushing on in the face of brutal setbacks. 

If there’s one name that thrills anyone interested in Antarctic exploration, Shackleton is it.

In 1914, he led a crew of 28 men to Antarctica aboard the sailing ship Endurance, with the goal of crossing the continent by dog sled. The weather was bad, and Endurance was frozen into the icepack. The following summer was cold, and the ice did not melt. It was almost two years on the ice and traversing the sea in small boats before Shackleton was able to bring his crew home. He lost not a single man.

What I found fascinating, besides the physical dangers they survived, was the camaraderie among the men and—hard to believe—some of them even went back on later expeditions.

Icebound is not a literary masterpiece nor is it a tale of exploration. It is, however, an essential Antarctic text, not just for the personal account found in its pages, but also because of the controversy still raging among Antarctic veterans regarding the decision to extract the author from Antarctica during the polar winter. Dr. Jeri Nielsen was the doctor at South Pole Station during the 1998 season. Her account of the challenges of polar medicine (Superglue is an essential medical supply at 90 South) and the stories of warm relationships with support staff at the station are fascinating. But the real story here is the diagnosis she made of her own breast cancer, which became a global news story when she was evacuated from the base during a dangerous winter flight.

Typically, there are no flights to South Pole Station during the polar winter due to exceptionally dangerous conditions… show more.

A gumbo of meat (often penguin), fat (typically blubber), and maybe some crushed-up biscuits, “hoosh” is the catch-all term used for meals of desperation cooked up and choked down by different historical expeditions, and it’s an apt title for Jason C. Anthony’s engaging and unique look at a slice of Antarctic living. Forget Shackleton’s heroics—what did he eat? How did early explorers survive on penguin eggs? Exactly how desperate does one have to be to eat seal brains? Why is baking at South Pole Station so difficult? Why was the Russian base Vostok stocked with so much vodka? (A question that probably answers itself.)

Anthony is a support staff veteran who has done a number of stints at various research stations on the seventh continent, and his wry narration—which weaves historical accounts with his own experiences—is great fun to read. I only encountered this book after South Pole Station was… show more.

So where are you going to invest and develop? Antoine Von Agtmael offers a very interesting analysis, in this regard. He points to the advantages of investing in certain kinds of smaller cities, including those with good community colleges, ample affordable housing, a welcoming political environment, and no shortage of abandoned factory buildings that can be easily converted for high-tech uses. This isn’t the only great contemporary context for investment, of course, but it’s a good one to study and understand.

I loved the setting—wild and beautiful but on-the-brink-of-collapse Antarctica.

And who knew there was a seed bank where all the seeds of the world are collected and saved? Who decides what’s worth saving?

A cliffhanger ending that kept me turning pages. I could never put it down.

In his breakthrough book, Henry Chesbrough described how companies are increasingly looking outside their boundaries for ideas and technologies they can bring in, as well as license their underutilized intellectual property to other organizations.

What I love about it is that Chesbrough applies the open innovation philosophy to actual business settings and explains how to create value in an open innovation landscape. The book includes a diagnostic instrument that helps a company assess its existing business model and explains how to overcome common barriers to creating a more open model.

The overall message for companies moving forward is that they can create and capture value from ideas and technologies wherever they may be found. Open innovation as a concept has spread widely, and companies today are advised to search far and wide for the resources they need and partners to work with.

In a time when industrial policy is no longer taboo, even in the West, I would recommend this book to remember the pivotal role that state policies play in promoting development.

More than being the result of self-made people, crucial innovations like the smartphone result from the research backbone that the state provides.

The book is, therefore, thought-provoking as it debunks myths of state decline during the so-called neoliberal age, although recognises that private firms have acquired excessive power.

In this classic, Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, famously wakes up one morning to discover that he is a gigantic vermin.

Interpretations of the book range from Kafka trying to say that modern life reduces us all to being bugs, to the idea that Kafka was really writing about art, and how, since the artist cannot ever be understood, he might as well be an insect.

I read it as Kafka's attempt to reconcile two philosophies - that of Nietzsche, who claimed that the human will is a force that leads to happiness, and that of Schopenhauer, who claimed that the will is just about survival.

In Kafka's hands, metamorphosis is both life-affirming and life-denying. 

This novel has everything I love – a narrator who’s definitely not telling us everything, newly arrived in a remote house by a lake in Norway that is so clearly drawn I can see and feel it in my bones.

Trond has secrets and this is where he’s going to live now. There’s a man down the track whose window he can see when it falls dark. A river flows fast beyond the trees. Petterson’s beautiful, spare writing creates a filmic atmosphere in which past mysteries unfold as Trond begins to learn to live alone with his past.

Stunning story-telling, wonderful place-setting, and a character utterly unlike me that I loved reading in his solitude.