Book Review: The Dawning of Antarctica: Through Exploration to Occupation

This extremely comprehensive record of the human history of the exploration of Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic Southern Ocean covers pre-discovery speculation, early circumnavigations in the Southern Hemisphere, commercial sealing and whaling in the Southern Ocean, the ‘Heroic Age’ of Antarctic exploration, the ‘Inter-war Year’ expeditions and the pre-modern era leading to the 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year (IGY). This history ends after the IGY, when the Antarctic had been basically ‘explored’ and was ‘occupied’ by permanent stations.