Barnes & NobleN-4 Down- The Hunt for the Arctic Airship Italia by Mark Piesing

GRIPPING. . . . One of the greatest polar rescue efforts ever mounted. - Wall Street Journal. The riveting true story of the largest polar rescue mission in history- the desperate race to find the survivors of the glamorous Arctic airship Italia, which crashed near the North Pole in 1928. Triumphantly returning from the North Pole on May 24, 1928, the world-famous exploring airship Italia code-named N-4 was struck by a terrible storm and crashed somewhere over the Arctic ice, triggering the largest polar rescue mission in history. Helping lead the search was Roald Amundsen, the poles' greatest explorer, who himself soon went missing in the frozen wastes. Amundsen's body has never been found, the last victim of one of the Arctic's most enduring mysteries . . . During the Roaring Twenties, zeppelin travel embodied the exuberant spirit of the age. Germany's luxurious Graf Zeppelin would run passenger service from Germany to Brazil, Britain's Imperial Airship was launched to connect an empire, in America, the iconic spire of the rising Empire State Building was designed as a docking tower for airships. But the novel mode of transport offered something else, too- a new frontier of exploration. Whereas previous Arctic and Antarctic explorers had subjected themselves to horrific often deadly conditions in their attempts to reach uncharted lands.