SOURCE: "Polar Challenge and Assault," in The New York Times Book Review, February 26, 1956, pp. 7, 27.

In the following review, Lloyd provides a brief summary of Berton's The Mysterious North.

To many people there is a perplexing similarity between the Arctic and Antarctic. Both come to mind as a mélange of ice and snow, penguins, polar bears, sledge dogs, blizzards, Eskimos, igloos and pack-ice and as the goal of infrequent but invariably heroic polar expeditions. Giant ice-breakers leave Boston for one in April and for the other in October, so that by some freak of geography we are provided with frigid and harrowing reports on a year-round basis.

All such confusion should now cease, even for readers who get no farther than the wrappers of these two excellent books. The jacket of Pierre Berton's The Mysterious North shows a mine shaft, a grinning native dance mask, a reindeer and...