About the Author

William L. Fox, Director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada, has variously been called an art critic, science writer, and cultural geographer. He has published sixteen books on cognition, art, and landscape, more than a hundred essays in art monographs, magazines, and journals, and fifteen collections of poetry. Fox has researched and written books set in the Antarctic, the Arctic, the Himalaya, and the deserts of Chile, Australia, and the United States. He is a fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and Explorers Club, and recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Science Foundation. He has been a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute, the Clark Art Institute, the Australian National University, the National Museum of Australia, and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

Reviews

"A fascinating look at the 'windiest, coldest, highest, and driest continent on earth' and man's creative responses to it, this seems the perfect read after seeing The March of the Penguins."

"Fox gives us an enthralling guided tour of the human mind's attempt to make space into place, and land into landscape."

"If you read only one book about Antarctica, you won't go wrong choosing this one."

"Thoughtful and enjoyable on many fronts, Fox's uniquely fashioned chronicle of Antarctica brings into sharper focus the crucial symbiosis between art and science."

"A fascinating look at the 'windiest, coldest, highest, and driest continent on earth' and man's creative responses to it, this seems the perfect read after seeing The March of the Penguins."
"Fox gives us an enthralling guided tour of the human mind's attempt to make space into place, and land into landscape."
"If you read only one book about Antarctica, you won't go wrong choosing this one."
"Thoughtful and enjoyable on many fronts, Fox's uniquely fashioned chronicle of Antarctica brings into sharper focus the crucial symbiosis between art and science."

The environment of Antarctica, "the largest and most extreme desert on Earth," is so foreign to our visual expectations that we are almost unable to perceive it. For Fox (Playa Works), who studies the ways in which humans respond to such vast, empty spaces, it's the ideal location for examining the connection between cognition and extreme landscapes. In this insightful book, he chronicles his Antarctic sojourn during the austral summer of 2001-2002, recording his impressions of the landscape and the people who live at McMurdo Station on Ross Island and at Pole, a newer station a few hundred feet away from the South Pole. At the same time, he examines the works of the cartographers, painters and photographers who have depicted Antarctica from the days of the earliest explorations down to the present, showing how the human mind transforms pure space into landscape, then turns landscape into art. A fascinating look at the "windiest, coldest, highest, and driest continent on earth" and man's creative responses to it, this seems the perfect read after seeing The March of the Penguins. 40 color photos, 2 maps. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.