CLOSURE: Central Library will be closed Tuesday, July 21, through Saturday, July 25, while emergency repairs are made to the building’s cooling system. We expect to reopen Monday, July 27. Click for more details on holds, program schedules, and returns during the closure. 

Notice of Public Meeting: Kalamazoo Public Library Board of Trustees | July 27 | 5:30 pm | Central Library/Van Deusen Room. The packet of information for the meeting can be found on the library’s website. 

Book

The stowaway : a young man's extraordinary adventure to Antarctica

Call Number

  • 919.89 S5296 (CEN)

Browse similar titles by call number

Edition

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.

Publication Information

New York : Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Physical Description

239 pages ; 22 cm

Summary

The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York's Lower East Side who stowed away on the Roaring Twenties' most remarkable feat of science and daring: an expedition to Antarctica. It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet's final frontier? This was the moon landing before the 1960s. Everyone wanted to join the adventure. Rockefellers and Vanderbilts begged to be taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe covered the planning's every stage. The night before the expedition's flagship launched, Billy Gawronski-a skinny, first generation New York City high schooler desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business-jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard. Could he get away with it? From the grimy streets of New York's Lower East Side to the rowdy dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica's blinding white and deadly freeze, Laurie Gwen Shapiro's The Stowaway takes you on the unforgettable voyage of a gutsy young stowaway who became an international celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps age.

Notes

"Simon & Schuster nonfiction original hardcover"--Title page verso.

Contents

  • Prologue
  • The Golden Door
  • Good Men Should Apply
  • The City of New York
  • The Triumph of the Century
  • South Pole or Bust
  • First Ice
  • The Stowaway Report
  • Fine Enough
  • Great Depression
  • Epilogue.

Subjects