What We Are Reading Today: Empire of Ice and Stone

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Updated 26 January 2023
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What We Are Reading Today: Empire of Ice and Stone

Author: Buddy Levy

In the summer of 1913, the wooden-hulled brigantine Karluk departed Canada for the Arctic Ocean. At the helm was Captain Bob Bartlett, considered the world’s greatest living ice navigator. 

The expedition’s visionary leader was a flamboyant impresario named Vilhjalmur Stefansson hungry for fame.

Set against the backdrop of the Titanic disaster and World War I, filled with heroism, tragedy, and scientific discovery, Buddy Levy’s “Empire of Ice and Stone” tells the story of two men and two distinctively different brands of leadership: one selfless, one self-serving, and how they would forever be bound by one of the most audacious and disastrous expeditions in polar history.


What We Are Reading Today: Island at the Edge of the World

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Updated 30 January 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: Island at the Edge of the World

  • Pitts has gone deeper than any other writer in cutting through the miasma of misperceptions that shrouds the island, even if his work sometimes bogs down in numbing detail

Author: Mike Pitts

In his ‘Island at the Edge of the World,’ British archeologist Mike Pitts delves into the misconceptions and legends surrounding a complex ancient culture.
The book is a work of historical revisionism that re-examines the history of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, using new archeological evidence, a fresh reading of 18th-century European accounts, and the long-overlooked work of early 20th-century anthropologist Katherine Routledge
Pitts’ investigation offers authoritative new insights into what really happened on the island.
Pitts has gone deeper than any other writer in cutting through the miasma of misperceptions that shrouds the island, even if his work sometimes bogs down in numbing detail.
Many questions still remain, but this is the most compelling and comprehensive account yet published of the extraordinary story of Easter Island.