Elisha Kent Kane, scion of a wealthy and influential Philadelphia family, became a legend of 19th-century America. Before he was 30, he had descended into a volcano in the Philippines, infiltrated a...

KEN McGOOGAN is the author of the national bestsellers Fatal Passage , Ancient Mariner and Lady Franklin’s Revenge . One of Canada’s leading historical biographers, he has won the Drainie-Taylor...

"[A]rguably the most evocative of his four volumes on vintage Arctic exploration. One of Sir John Franklin's would-be rescuers, Elisha Kent Kane, sought an open sea at the top of the world and found instead upraised tables of ice 14 feet thick. The most literate of the northern adventurers, Kane left an impressive legacy that McGoogan, who sailed the same waters - now ice-free - explains, expands and makes relevant. This is a memorable book about an unforgettable odyssey."