Striking color photos of icebergs, explorers, flora, and fauna provide the primary appeal here, while the choppy, somewhat disjointed text ranges over prehistory, exploration, recent scientific expeditions, and current efforts to protect the continent. There's much to intrigue: ice fish that lack hemoglobin; dinosaur fossils; pollen samples from ice cores 180,000 years old; frozen lichens growing beneath the surface of sandstone rocks. Winckler and Rodgers's Our Endangered Planet. Antarctica (p. 725) is more carefully organized and coherent, but the photos here are more spectacular. Brief glossary; index. (Nonfiction. 10-12)
