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An Adventurous Life »
Johan Koren, polar explorer and naturalist
Authored by: Steinar Wikan, Cathrine Harboe-Ree
Publication date: 2026
Johan Koren commenced a life of exploration at the age of 17, when he attained a position on the RV Belgica, leaving his native Norway in 1897 on an expedition to the Antarctic. Trapped by ice floes closing in around them, Koren and his fellow crew members over-wintered in the Antarctic, the first people ever to do so.
An ardent naturalist by the time he became an orphan at age 11, this far-from-ordinary teenager was to grow into an extraordinary adult, participating in expeditions in the polar north and south and becoming a ship’s captain leading expeditions in northeastern Siberia and Alaska. During a period in which museums and private collectors clamoured for rare flora and fauna specimens, Koren’s personal qualities and professional expertise made him almost uniquely qualified for their pursuit. Enduring shipwrecks in the sub-Antarctic and polar north, destructive storms and the deaths of expedition companions, and surviving for a time in Siberia with assistance from local Chukchi people, Koren would eventually make important ornithological discoveries and have bird and animal species named after him by the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.
An Adventurous Life is the first English language translation of Steinar Wikan’s comprehensive biographical study, published in Norwegian in 2000. Cathrine Harboe-Ree’s careful and sensitive translation will make known to the world the remarkable story of this major figure of polar exploration and zoology.
‘A fascinating reflection on the period of scientific exploration when collecting was central to the huge expansion of knowledge of the natural world taking place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries’.
—Michael Pearson
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Global Allies »
Comparing US Alliances in the 21st Century
Edited by: Michael Wesley
Publication date: June 2017
The global system of alliances that the United States built after the Second World War underpinned the stability and prosperity of the postwar order. But during the 20th century, the multilateral NATO alliance system in Europe and the bilateral San Francisco alliance system in Asia rarely interacted. This changed in the early 21st century, as US allies came together to fight and stabilise conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia. This volume presents the first-ever comparative study of US alliances in Europe and Asia from the perspectives of US allies: the challenges, opportunities and shifting dynamics of these fundamental pillars of order. This volume is essential reading for those interested in contemporary and future regional and global security dynamics.