audiobooks
Cover of From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People

From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People

Sven Hedin

Length
17 h 17 min
Chapters
24
Language
English
First published
1912

This book was first published in 1912. It is a simplified English translation of the author's Från pol till pol: genom Asien och Europa (Bonnier, Stockholm, 1911).

Part 1 tells of Hedin's own extensive travels across Europe and Asia. Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. He provides fascinating descriptions of cities and peoples and events in the closing years of the 19th century. It's a fascinating travelogue.

Part 2 recounts the stories of other great explorers/adventurers/villains: Gordon at Khartoum, Livingstone and Stanley in Africa, the destruction of the Inca empire by Pizzaro, hunting the blue whale in southern waters, Shackleton's near miss of the South Pole...even a mention of Alexander Selkirk, as an excuse for retailing the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. It's a very mixed bag, designed to appeal "to young people." (Summary by Steven Seitel)

Chapters

From LibriVox, read by volunteers and in the public domain. LibriVox page (opens librivox.org), the text (opens gutenberg.org), all files on the Internet Archive (opens archive.org).