Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica

Book Description
What goes on in Antarctica? Is it the pristine but harsh frontier where noble scientific missions are accomplished? Or an insane corporate bureaucracy where hundreds of workers are cooped together in hi-tech communes with all the soul of a suburban office park? Welcome to Big Dead Place, a grunt's eye view of America's Antarctic Program that shatters the well-worn clichés of polar literature. Here the heroic camaraderie and romantic desolation give way to sterile buildings populated by characters like a crazed manager who fills his boots with antifreeze, the greasepaint-obsessed worker Boozy the Clown, ghosts that haunt the food freezer, and horny employees who grab rare private moments coupling on the altar in the Chapel of the Snows. The Foreword is by Eirik Sønneland, who claims the longest unsupported ski trek in the continent's history. Also included is a glossary of Antarctic slang and bureaucratese, and 16 pages of color photographs.


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The book moves with mordant style into the madness of life in this outpost, with insider accounts of violent parties at the South Pole, a crazed manager who tries to fill his boots with antifreeze, the enraged administrator who confiscated an unauthorized shower curtain, sex on the altar in the Chapel of the Snows, a ghost that has haunted the food freezer for years, and a scientist terrified of the region's perpetual darkness.


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