Bering The Russian Discovery of America Frost Orcutt

Vitus Jonassen Bering (1681-1741) is a towering figure in the history of exploration. In the course of two expeditions that consumed most of his adult life - and eventually led to his death - he journeyed from St Petersburg to Siberia and ultimately to the northwest coast of America. Along with the members of his expedition (thousands participated in the second expedition), Bering greatly expanded the Russian empire, pioneered the geography of the North Pacific Ocean, and laid the groundwork for Russian trade and settlement in the American West. In this biography of Bering, Orcutt Frost chronicles the life of this extraordinary explorer. Drawing on a wide range of new evidence - including personal letters and archaeological evidence derived from the discovery of Bering's grave site - the author reconstructs Bering's personality, his perilous voyages and his uneasy relationship with the naturalist Georg Steller, who unobtrusively guided the stranded expedition as Bering lay dying.

Orcutt Frost, emeritus professor of the humanities at Alaska Pacific University, is an authority on Bering's voyages and has written numerous books and articles on the subject.

'Publication by Yale University Press has become a guarantee of literary merit as well as scholarly excellence. Orcutt Frost's scholarship is irreproachable. But how does work so judicious, so scrupulous, so reticent, so resistant to sensation and artifice, contrive to be so gripping? This is the formula historians crave: a rattling read, without sacrifice of academic austerity.' - Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Literary Review

'[A] fascinating account... By setting Bering's missions in their wider context [Frost] illuminates Russia's rise as a major power.' - Times Literary Supplement

'A higly readable, effective and useful biography of Bering, the first in over a century. ... This new biography fills a large gap in the story of the evolving realisation of North Pacific geography. All interested in the nature of the saga will appreciate Frost's contribution here, a fitting conclusion to his own evolution as biographer.' - Stephen Haycox, The Mariner's Mirror