Cook & Peary: the Polar Controversy, Resolved

Draws on diaries, private letters, newspaper reports, and other primary sources to examine the careers of two rival explorers and the controversy over which one had been the first to reach the North Pole

A book for everyone for whom the truth matters.

Many have asked me why it is important which one, Cook or Peary, both or neither, reached the North Pole. Why should anyone care after nearly a century? And now that the popular press and the internet have revealed my conclusion, why would anyone want to read my very long book? These would be reasonable questions if the only question to be settled was the simple one of who had polar priority. What makes them less reasonable is that answering that simple question is not what is most interesting about the Polar Controversy, nor is it the most important question that my book attempts to answer. That is the eternal question of WHY. Why did these two men of ability choose to spend their lives in the pursuit of an impossible and worthless dream? Why did they lie about attaining that dream after they realized it was impossible to attain? Why have so many people cared so much about whether they did attain it or not and, like the writers of the comments on this Web page, still argue so passionately for or against one or the other?

Any worthwhile journey has more rewards than arriving at its destination, and like any worthwhile journey, the rewards of reading my book are the same as were the rewards of writing it, but with a lot less trouble for the reader than the writer. They come not in the conclusion reached, but in the many things seen and the many lessons learned along the way.

The Polar Controversy seemed to pose a simple question, but the attempts to answer that seemingly simple question have raised other complex questions in their wake that are not so easily answered. They have to do with the deepest recesses of the human mind where the most basic thoughts arise. They, in turn, pose the questions of the ages: Is history truth? Is truth itself absolute? The persistence of the interest in the seemingly unimportant question of who first stood at a spot that has no physical existence testifies to the power of human faith and the tenaciousness of human belief, and it hints at the human heart's basic need for assurance that the affairs of men are orderly rather than simply chancy and unpredictable. And the answer to that seemingly unimportant question about the discovery of a place that has no reality illustrates that truth and dreams have no reality either, but are rather both products of the mind and are sometimes one and the same.

And so, although the question of who first reached the North Pole may be unimportant in itself, the questions raised by those who have attempted to answer it are not, because they are ultimately the questions that all must face and therefore they are universal and momentous. That is why this story has fascinated so many, so long.

One of the characters in my book has this to say about explorers and what the study of their lives might reveal:

"The explorer's master motive craves above all, knowledge of itself. The life of man as it is, naked and unshadowed, brutal maybe, life under every stress of fortune.

"Men with the masks of civilization torn off, and struggling through magic regions ruled over by the Spirit of the North or the South, human beings tamed by the centuries, then cast out to shift for themselves like the first victims of existence--they must offer the best field of all to help this knowledge of ourselves.

"The world dwells mostly on the sensational fact of winning pole or peak, oblivious to that the long human struggle, inspired by that master motive which mitigates endurance and suffering, is to the explorer his real end, consciously or not."

--And so, ultimately, Cook & Peary is a story about two explorers on a quest into the unknown toward discovery, not just seeking the North Pole but, consciously or not, also in search of the even more inaccessible mysteries that lie within the ultimate enigma of the human heart and mind.

Unlike the question of who discovered the North Pole, those are the mysteries that can have no simple answers.

The psychology of the partisans of the Polar Controversy is exemplary of those mysteries. The readers of the Amazon.com Web page may well wonder about the wide variance of opinion on the merits of my book and the ratings it has received. For some, the Polar Controversy will never be resolved, because they do not want it to be resolved. Their personal fantasies mean more to them than impersonal truth. For them, not even 1,133 pages of carefully researched text could possibly make any difference. As one observer of the Polar Controversy wrote: "Personal championship and devotion once aroused is one of the most powerful and indestructible of human motives," whether it be the partisans of Cook or Peary or even Matt Henson, Peary's black assistant.

As one reporter predicted in 1909, "There will be a 'Cook (or a Peary, or a Henson) party' to the end of time, no matter how strong the evidence brought against him in the future, no matter if he made public confession of fraud." Scholars must rely on documentary evidence and careful research alone to support their conclusions, but partisans have many means. Partisans are never satisfied with any study, no matter how careful made and documented, that does not reach the conclusion they desire. But I did not write Cook & Peary to satisfy the partisans. I wrote it for everyone else to whom truth matters, no matter what that truth might be.

But in the end, people will believe what they want to believe. Therefore, I don't ask you to read Cook & Peary so that you will believe what I believe. All I ask is that you read it before you decide what to believe for yourself.