Tom Griffiths teaches history and the environment at the Australian National University in Canberra and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Historian and author Tom Griffiths turns his attention to Antarctica in his latest book. Using his own Antarctic trip as a framing device, he explores the myriad historical, political, geographical, and personal links between Australia and Antarctica. Griffiths is a lucid, sympathetic writer, drawing extensively on both primary sources and the work of other researchers. He combines his interests in environmental and social history to provide a portrait of life in the last great wilderness. His overarching theme is the constant strange allure of this silent, deadly place. Griffiths gives us sketches of all of the expected personalities, from Cook to Scott to Mawson and beyond, but he also gives us the less celebrated ones: doctors, ornithologists, whalers, geologists, cooks and more. We glimpse their personal lives, and share some measure of their tragedies and triumphs. The unrelenting physical nature of Antarctica is a central theme of the book, and Griffiths provides fascinating background on the continent’s climate, geography and long prehistory. Tom Griffiths does a superb job of evoking the past, illuminating the present, and hinting at the future of the other great southern land. A great read for fans of travel writing, historiography, and all things Antarctic. Heath Graham is a secondary teacher and bookseller for A&R Doncaster
As the climate changes and polar ice caps shrink dramatically,
author and environmental historian Griffiths provides essential
background for understanding how we reached the current state of
meltdown...Engrossing and highly satisfying...A fine and
informative ecological adventure, Griffiths' history is worth
reading and re-reading.
Griffiths is an Australian environmental historian who weaves the
story of his visit [to Antarctica] supplying a scientific research
station with a good deal of history and science. He writes with
insight about the past and probable future as seen from the front
lines of the global-warming crisis.--George Fetherling"Seven Oaks"
(12/12/2007)
"Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica" is a many-layered,
sophisticated narrative, not only of the Antarctic, but our
relationship with it.--Jean McNeil"Globe and Mail" (11/03/2007)
In 2002 Griffiths, an environmental historian, accompanied a team
of researchers to Antarctica. He writes about the romance of ocean
exploration, the expeditions of Scott and Shackleton, but also
about how high winds make that continent an indicator of global
climate health.--Susan Salter Reynolds"Los Angeles Times Book
Review" (09/30/2007)
This is an extraordinary book, as notable as that of Griffiths's
antipodal fellow traveler Barry Lopez (whose 1986 best seller,
"Arctic Dreams," won a National Book Award). Griffiths turns
otherwise humdrum shipboard jottings into starting points for
inspired ruminations on the meaning of the Antarctic experience.
Although he has never ventured into the interior, he seems to have
read virtually everything published on the discovery, exploration,
and exploitation of the southern continent, along with a host of
unpublished diaries and station logs. Best of all, he relates what
he has learned in prose that is both thoughtful and luminous...Few
of us will ever visit Antarctica, even though cruise ships now
bring several tens of thousands of high-rolling tourists to its
coasts each year. Readers, I am sure, will come away from this book
agreed that fewer is better, because Griffiths makes it clear just
how special this land is, and, for all its ruggedness, how fragile.
Better to leave Antar
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