If somebody told me that they were going to fly a blimp filled with hydrogen gas to the North Pole and back, I’d question their sanity. But in the mid-1920s, before the Hindenberg explosion in 1937, dirigibles were all the rage. And although Italian airships captained by General Umberto Nobile made it to the top of the world twice, becoming the first and second airships to do so, the latter trip ended in a disaster that triggered one of the most extensive searches in polar history. In Disaster at the Pole, Wilbur Cross has the story of the flight of the airship Italia, the Italia‘s May 25, 1928, crash, and the crew’s epic struggle for survival in a small, red, tent on the Arctic sea ice as multiple international teams tried to rescue them.