The latest releases for curious minds

 Antarctica:  a Continent  of Wonder

JOURNEY ACROSS THIS ICY CONTINENT WITHOUT LEAVING HOME

▪ Author: Mario Cuesta Hernando 

▪ Publisher: Prestel

▪ Price: £14.99 / $19 .95

▪ Release: Out now

Antarctica is one of the most hostile places to human life on the planet, with temperatures that can be low enough to freeze carbon dioxide out of the air and barely any plants or animals to speak of. It’s probably why Antarctica is such a fascinating place to us: the few species that call this huge and chilly continent home are extremely specialised, and apart from a few scientists who stay just months at a time to study the place, humans have never inhabited it. The air is clear, the land is untainted and the wildlife is relatively untouched.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t go on a tour of this beautiful, wild land, and it’s even better that author and explorer Mario Cuesta Hernando is taking us along with him in this fantastic illustrated guide. We travel from Cape Horn to the frozen Antarctic coastline, across the ice to a research station where we stay for one winter before we return. On our travels we make a pit stop to peek beneath our icebreaker ship and discover an astonishing host of underwater sea creatures that thrive in the Antarctic Ocean, including sea spiders, sponges and starfish that have been encased in an underwater ice stalactite. We meet a variety of whales, seals and birds that live in and around the wild seas despite their warm blood, before we head inland to the research station at the South Pole.