In search of Christopher Columbus : the Bahamas, June 1891 -- Arctic enthusiasm is an intermittent fever : Washington DC, February 1894 -- A dog show and the Seven Islands : Belgium, Norway, and Spitsbergen, April-May 1894 -- Shipwrecked at the Hotel White Bear: Spitsbergen, May-July, 1894 -- The president cannot be stampeded : Washington DC, February-May 1898 -- Like opening a grave : Northbrook Island, Franz Josef Land, July 28, 1898 -- Tell them what it was like for us here : Franz Josef Land, August-December, 1898 -- The strenuous life : Franz Josef Land, February-July 1899 -- The people are barely able to exist : Washington DC, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, April-August 1902 -- With Johnny D'Mitch and the Coal Barons : Washington DC and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, August-October 1902 -- This crime against organized labor : Colorado and Washington DC, June-December, 1904 -- Motor sledges and airships : Washington DC, 1903-1906 -- The scheme was crazy enough to seem workable : Paris, France, and Tromsø, Norway, January-June 1906 -- The airship station on Virgo Bay: Danes Island, Spitsbergen, July-August 1906 -- Wellman vs. Peary : Washington DC, November 1906-May 1907 -- Balloons, aeroplanes, and the acrobatic photographer : Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, and France, 1901-1907 -- Go? of course. what else are we here for? : Danes Island, Spitsbergen, July-September 1907 -- Lost in a Snowstorm above the Polar Sea: Spitsbergen, September 2, 1907 -- Campaigns and Dollars: Washington DC and various locations, 1908-1909 -- Under the Ice, Over the Ice: Danes Island, Spitsbergen, 1908-1909 -- Nowhere does his story ring true : Norway, Denmark, France, and the United States, September-November 1909 -- Mr. Wellman's unbusinesslike charm : Chicago, New York, and the White Nile River in Egyptian Sudan, February-March 1910 -- The funniest damn ship I ever joined : Atlantic City, New Jersey, July-August 1910 -- The airship, bringer of total war and universal peace : Osawatomie, Kansas, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, August-September 1910 -- The aero-not : Atlantic City, August-October 1910 -- It's Europe or bust from this minute on : Atlantic City, October 15, 1910 -- Only a question of time when we blow up : Atlantic City, New York City, and the Long Island coast, October 15, 1910 -- The Queen of Spades : Nantucket Shoals, North Atlantic Ocean, October 16, 1910 -- A sort of bleeding to death : North Atlantic Ocean, October 17, 1910 -- CQD: North Atlantic Ocean, October 18, 1910 -- You're all right, old man!: Atlantic City and New York City, October-December 1910 -- New dreams for the Aerial Age: New York City, Atlantic City, and Akron, Ohio, 1911 -- The most perilous element of all : Atlantic City, October 1911-July 1912 -- Epilogue: New York City, 1912-1934
Summary:
"In his day Walter Wellman (1858-1934) was one of America's most famous men. To his contemporaries, he seemed like a character from a Jules Verne novel. He led five expeditions in search of the North Pole, two by dogsled and three by dirigible airship, and in 1910 made the first attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air--which the self-styled expert on aerial warfare saw as a mission of world peace. He endured hardships, cheated death on more than one occasion, and surrounded himself with a team of assistants as eccentric and audacious as he was. In addition to his daring adventures, Wellman became a nationally known political reporter and unofficial spokesman for the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations. He was not the first newspaper-sponsored adventurer, but more than any of his predecessors he turned exploration into a real-time media event, and his reputation both flourished and suffered because of it. Wellman lived during a time of rapid social and technological change, when explorers were racing to fill in the last remaining blank spots on the map and when aviation promised to fulfill humanity's greatest hopes and darkest fears. Flight to the Top of the World is a window into Wellman's time and illuminates many of its dreams and contradictions" -- provided by the publisher.
