No comments about Kamuchakka gakujutsu kiko: Soren ni taisuru urami wa kokufuku dekiru daro ka : gekido no Soren kyokuto chiiki o yuku (Shizenshi shirizu).

No comments about Commonwealth of Independent States: Ukraine Moldavia, Crimea (Marco Polo Country Maps).

No comments about The Soviet Union: A New Regional Geography?.

No comments about Colorado Investment and Business Guide (US Business and Investment Library).

No comments about The American Express Pocket Guide to Moscow/Leningrad.

No comments about The Baltic, The Black Sea And The Crimea: Comprising Travels In Russia, A Voyage Down The Volga To Astrachan And A Tour Through Crim Tartary.

No comments about Russia's decisive year.

No comments about Caviar for breakfast;: An American woman's adventures in Russia.

No comments about The bear-worshippers of Yezo and the island of Karafuto (Saghalin),: Or The adventures of the Jewett family and their friend Oto Nambo,.

5 comments about Four Against the Arctic: Library Edition.

1. I kept going with this book because I felt it just had to get better at some point-but it doesn't. As other reviewers have pointed out, this is a story about research, not about the four men who survived the shipwreck. I was hoping the polar bears would get the whole boring lot of them, but no luck with that, either.



2. It is difficult to understand why anyone would state as a COMPLAINT that "The book is about David Roberts and his research into a survival story." Yes, that is EXACTLY what it is. Roberts' story-within-a-story is accessable, immediate, often humorously self-disparaging, and it shows a drive for knowledge which one can only admire.
   
   I was captured by the end of the first paragraph of the introduction, and I couldn't put it down. Great stuff.



3. This book is NOT the story of the four Russian sailors shipwrecked for four years in the Arctic. It is the story of the author researching the story of the four Russians. He does uncover some interesting bits about early Russian and Norwegian Arctic exploration but it is all buried in 288 pages of the author's self importance.



4. While the parts about the Russian sailors are interesting, the book rapidly degrades into the author's ego trip as the book becomes more about what a clever researcher he is and less about the sailors. What a shame.



5. I got this book because the title seemed to suggest it would be a story about FOUR AGAINST THE ARCTIC. It's not. The book is an endless description of David Roberts research into the story I hoped to learn more about. While Roberts telling of his story is creative and his research thorough, this reader would have appreciated having a title that described what the book was really about. This is not the first time I have seen a book title by this publisher that seems to mislead readers just a bit. It's disappointing.