From Hero to Humbug

July saw the publication of the third edition of The Lost Notebook of Dr. Frederick A. Cook. Originally published in 2013, it had one previous major revision done to it in 2018. The new edition has been a year in preparation.
A number of small errors have been corrected, some sections revised to include new [...]

It is almost impossible for a self-published book to receive a professional review in the United States. That’s because many journals still believe that a book that is not subject to the normal publishing process is either a “vanity” book or somehow compromised by not being professionally edited. There is certainly merit in [...]

Today is the sesquicentennial of Frederick A. Cook’s birth. He was born in Hortonville, NY on this day in 1865. Sullivan County records record Cook’s birth in Hortonville. His family lived there until they moved to Port Jervis in 1878. The family home was occupied by Cook’s brother, Theodore, until his [...]

A distinct advantage to digital publishing is the ability to correct or update an existing text and incorporate those changes into the latest available printed copies of a book. Since The Lost Polar Notebook of Dr. Frederick A. Cook was published in December 2013, several changes have been made to the original file, and [...]

The Polar Record published the author’s article on Cook’s Lost Polar Notebook on January 26 as a “First View” article, meaning it now available to view online to subscribers. The title is “It proves falsehood absolutely …” The Lost Polar Notebook of Dr. Frederick A. Cook. It can be viewed by clicking on the [...]

Readers of this blog will have noted the last post in 2012 reporting the author of this website’s plan to transcribe one of the notebooks Cook kept on his 1908 polar expedition. As that plan nears completion, The Polar Record, published by Cambridge University Press, has agreed to publish a major article summarizing the [...]

As reported on this blog last year, the Frederick A. Cook Society website domain name Cookpolar.org was sold to an outfit in Japan and the content disappeared from the Internet except for a screen shot taken by the Library of Congress. Now, the same content has resurfaced at a new domain. The new [...]

The author of this website is now well into writing a transcription of Frederick Cook’s polar notebook which he unearthed in Denmark in 1993. The notebook exists in a photographic copy made by the University of Copenhagen in 1910. The whereabouts of the original are unknown. This notebook contains a diary of [...]

Another sign of the hard times the Frederick A. Cook Society has fallen on is the lapse of their website located at www.cookpolar.org. For some time the site just vanished from the web; then the domain name came up for sale. I put in a bid for it, but they claimed it was [...]

My Attainment of the Pole
Cook’s “final summary” of his expedition was a long time in coming. Cook had become so notorious after the Copenhagen decision that no legitimate publisher would touch his narrative.
Because he self published it, Cook tried to save expenses. Although the finished book looked good, it was shoddily bound, and [...]