HarperCollins

Kate Harris bicycled the Silk Road from Turkey to Tibet, chasing the ghost of Marco Polo and her own childhood dream of exploration. The question at the book's center: is there still anywhere left to explore?

Is it a cookbook? A field journal memoir? A photo album with cool archives, like a scan of a 1912 polar menu featuring “Plum Pouding Union Jack” and penguin? Yes, yes, and yes. But, cooking and cleaning...in Antarctica? Two young women, one an activist, the other a backcountry cook, organized a remote island cleanup project to pick up man-made litter. They cajoled 54 volunteers and constructed one makeshift kitchen to feed everyone for a summer. The experience is told by scrapbook: journal entries, maps, 40 recipes, menus, and to-do lists. Photos historical and modern show the characters drawn to the austral extremes over the last century, from Shackleton to today’s international scientists and adventurers. Maybe it’s the honey oatmeal bread, musings of Russian and Chilean researchers, or dreamlike images of icebergs and whale flukes, but taken together, in what would seem by the title to be the least likely compelling read, it’s a surprisingly hearty chronicle of the bottom of the world.