Darrell Hartman’s account of the dramatic struggle to reach the North Pole is also an untold chapter in the making of the modern New York Times.

In the fall of 1909, the American explorers Robert Peary and Frederick Cook sparked a vicious international feud when both claimed to have discovered the North Pole. Fanning the flames were two powerful New York newspapers—the storied Herald and the ascendant Times—who each committed themselves to an opposing explorer and fought desperately to defend him. The ensuing decades of frostbite and fake news would not only shape the future of the Times but the overall landscape of corporate media.

Hartman, joined by NYPL’s Robert B. Menschel Curator of Photography Elizabeth Cronin, discusses his new book, which he researched using the collections of The New York Public Library.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Darrell Hartman has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Paris Review, Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, and Granta. A native Mainer, he now lives in New York City and the Catskills. He holds a B.A. in literature from Yale University and is a member of The Explorers Club in New York. Battle of Ink and Ice (Viking, 2023) is his first book.

Elizabeth Cronin is the Robert B. Menschel Curator of Photography. She is the Curator of the upcoming exhibition The Awe of the Arctic: A Visual History, which opens in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building this spring. She has worked on numerous exhibitions here at the Library and is the author of the book Heimat Photography in Austria. Cronin received her PhD in Art History from the CUNY Graduate Center.

READ THE BOOK:

• Borrow: NYPL Catalog


• E-Book app: SimplyE, available on iOS and Android

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Darrell Hartman © Peter Crosby 
Courtesy Elizabeth Cronin