Extremes: Surviving the World's Harshest Environments

By Nick Middleton

Humans have a remarkable knack for surviving harsh environments. But how do people really endure the world's most remote and inhospitable landscapes, where nature still reigns and where the physical geography is raw and unforgiving? In "Extremes, " renowned geographer and travel writer Nick Middleton puts his body and mind to the test in an attempt to find the answer.His mission is to learn how to cope with four especially horrendous habitats. Through arctic wasteland, jungle, desert, and swamp, Nick pits himself against the elements and explains the geographical conditions that conspire to produce the world's harshest ecologies. He also discovers the various human quirks that people have evolved to make life at the edge bearable. In northern Greenland, Nick joins a group of Inuits hunting for narwhal, crucial to the group's survival, on the edge of fragile sea ice, while in the jungle he ventures into Congo's tropical forest, home of the Biaka pygmies. He joins the annual crossing of the Tenere desert by the women of the Tubu tribe to collect dates and then travels to Papua, one of the least explored places on earth, to find the Kombai people, a remote group of tree house dwellers above the Asmat region's flood plain. "Extremes" is Nick Middleton's amazing account of four of the most unwelcoming environments on earth. Can he pick up enough tips from the indigenous people of these locations to hack it at the very edge of human existence, or will his mid-latitude sensibilities forever let him down?

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312342667
• ISBN13: 9780312342661
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable Travelogue Through Ice, Jungle, Sand and Swamp

Nick Middleton sets out to visit for a brief time some of our planet's harshest environments and share with his reading public how people manage to live there every day of their lives. He titles is chapters "Ice," "Jungle," "Sand," and "Swamp." Ice takes him to Greenland in pursuit of the narwhal with natives above the Arctic Circle. Jungle takes Middleton to deepest, darkest Africa on a hike with pygmy people through dense jungle. Sand sees Middleton crossing the Sahara Desert with an all-female camel caravan in pursuit of trade and water. Finally, in swamp, the author canoes into remote Papua, a south-sea island barely above sea level to determine if fresh water crocodiles inhabit the land. This is a good book that teaches as well as entertains. Middleton makes sure to tell about Greenland's history, the interactions of various Congo tribal groups, missionary work among the Papua tribes and social relations in the desert. Along the way he eats his share of termites, participates in a Tubu tribe dating ritual involving body paint and preening for the unattached ladies and helps build habitable land in the swamp with a machete and sea grass. The book entertains as well as informs. An enjoyable ride for armchair travelers