Thanks to Harper Collins/Mariner Books and NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC in return for my honest review.
I loved this book! Author Mark Piesing has given us a history of the airship/blimp as it helped the last few of the heroic explorers fly to the North Pole. The N-4 is an Italian airship constructed and captained by Umberto Nobili, the leading Italian aviator at the time. Piesing begins by giving us a very solid history of the airships and that last era of these adventurers. About half the book details one of Nobili's prior airships he helped pilot over the North Pole and actually landed in Alaska! That was in 1926, but Nobili had to share the exploration with 2 others, one of which was famed explorer Roald Amundsen, some of those exploits were comical in their competitiveness. But the 2nd half of this book deals with how things changed after his return from that flight and the impediments put in his return by the Italian government and arch-rival Italo Baldo. The N-4 was doomed from the beginning as everything and every decision that could go wrong, did go wrong. Nobili was determined to lead the N-4 as the solo commander and this determination cost lives, as the airship plummeted to earth. This is the story of the man, the journey, the crash, the polar survival and rescue of some of those lucky to survive. A compelling non-fiction look at a time in history that few of us know about and that last era of the heroic explorers, who wanted to find the vast unknown knowing full well that it was likely they would never return. Powerful story. A definite 5***** in my opinion.

I am an Arctic/Antarctic exploration enthusiast and I have never heard this story before. Centered around the exploration of the North Pole by Umberto Nobile in an airship and its subsequent crash, this book is great for anyone who loves a good, cold narrative.

The book is at its best when talking about the exciting aspects of the story such as the actual explorations and does a great job explaining the science without ruining the readability. The episodes over the ice are obviously the best, but getting an understanding of airships is a close second. Even if it means I would never, ever get on one. The rivalry between Nobile and explorer extraordinaire Roald Amundsen is also fascinating.

I would caution someone who expects the book description to cover all the topics in depth that it promises. Amundsen's fate is a small part of the overall book and there is a fair amount of politics mixed in which leaves the actual exploration episodes a bit shorter. None of this ruins the book, but this is much more of a biography of Nobile than anything else.

(This book was provided to me as an advance copy by HarperCollins and Netgalley.)

Gripping…… The riveting true story of the largest polar rescue mission in history:
Well worth a read! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Interesting throughout, this is not quite friendly enough for the layman to get what I think is the expected score. It's practically halfway through the narrative chunk of the book (there being many references and a healthy index) before we even see mention of the titular N4 dirigible. Instead we've built slowly and too forensically to that stage with the N1, when Umberto Nobile was employed by the erstwhile heroic explorer Roald Amundsen to fly an airship containing the Norwegian to the second of the world's opposite Poles he wanted to achieve. Amundsen had definitely beaten Scott to the South Pole, with better equipment, less bluster in the press and the right kind of dog, but having failed to fly over the North Pole before, he needed something way beyond his remit to get him to maximum north – and that was an Italian airship, piloted by Nobile in full-on "sleep? What's that?!" mode with Amundsen and his American funder more or less as glorified passengers.

Yes, it may have been a lot different if the cockamamie plan to drop men onto the Arctic ice to claim the bag was at all possible, but it wasn't, and this book really didn't seem to be too great a fan of Amundsen's approach when it came to working with Nobile, nor of his bitter last book where he moaned about Nobile getting his tuppenny worth into the public domain better than the ageing Norseman. But eventually we get to see the crux of the matter – the N4 flights, where Nobile again left Svalbard for not one but a planned five jaunts for scientific research and exploration. With bad weather, and so many other problems, they never got finished. And oh the irony, and the hatred from some, when he needs rescuing – and the failed recovery of him and his crew was the last activity of a certain Roald Amundsen…

There is a lot here about jingoism, about the bizarre politics of Mussolini and his aviator henchman in not wanting to bother too much to get the guys off the ice, and so much more. Too much more, as I say (a biased commission investigating Nobile had a worthy ally of his on it, but to so little effect it barely deserves a mention, for one example). This wants all the forensic detail of who is who and when they did or did not get rescued (except it leaves us hanging with one aviator completely), and all the possible backstory running up to all this – if given a lighter touch it might well have become a popular classic on the shelves of Arctic exploration history books. It still remains readable, mind, and I dithered over four stars, but I saw the more compelling scenes as hampered by all the minutiae elsewhere. Three and a half, instead, then.

An thoroughly engrossing story about the lost Italian expedition to the North Pole. The hardships involved by those involved were harrowing. A great read!

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A good book for polar exploration nerds, and a nice one for all my Amundsen-heads (foregrounding his later life and death rather than his early achievements). Somewhat contrary to the title, the <i>Italia</i> doesn't show up until nearly halfway through the book (or probably more than that, accounting for notes and index). The first half of the book instead deals with the background of earlier polar exploration via airship (and airplane), especially the Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile expedition aboard the airship <i>Norge</i>, and a partial overview of airship design generally in the years leading up to the flights of the <i>Norge</i> and <i>Italia</i>. It's not a subject I've seen covered elsewhere, covering a passing of the torch from the heroic, hardy Arctic explorer to the aeronaut and engineer. Pretty interesting stuff.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Harper Collins- Mariner Books for an advanced copy of this book about the risks and rewards of Arctic Exploration in the early days of manned flight.

With Google Maps offering views of most of the Earth from the comfort of a person's couch on either tablet, or phone, it's amazing to think that just one hundred years earlier there were places on Earth that were still unknown, still mysterious and drew many a person to their deaths trying to find out there secrets. Men, dogs, money and reputations were lost, heroes and villains were created equally. Soon a new piece of technology was to change the idea of exploration. If the ice was so dangerous, why not just fly over it. However what happened if a flying transport was to crash? Mark Piesing in his book N-4 Down: The Hunt for the Arctic Airship Italia tells of one airship expedition that went wrong, the rescue attempts, the lives lost and those who were changed forever.

The North was still a mystery even one hundred years ago. Ideas about the size of the land, was there an inland sea, so many questions begged to be answered. Flight would help answer these questions, and airships were thought to be the best to lead the way. Huge craft, able to carry men, supplies and fuel, lead by experienced aviators with trained explorers assisting. The first attempt with famed explorer Roald Amundsen and Italian airship designer General Umberto Nobile has been a success, but infighting about who did what, and attacks on each other's characters made left a bad taste and lots of rumors about the expedition. Nobile attempted another expedition, with a mostly Italian crew, but disaster struck, killing 4 men immediately and leaving the rest trapped on breaking ice, and far from rescue. Amundsen began to prepare for a rescue attempt.

A book about the draw of the north, what makes a person journey to the unknown and puzzle out its mysteries. The lives of aviators and the explorers are covered almost all men, but one brave woman who joined the search for the missing airmen. Plus the book is a history of airships there slow rise, and spectacular fall. Piesing has done a wonderful job of collecting a lot of stories and doing a tremendous amount of research on a very large cast of characters, from pretty much all over Europe. Piesing has a nice way of writing keeping the narrative going, not bogging down with again a lot of characters and keeping the story moving and moving well. I learned quite a bit about the Arctic, building and maintaining airships, and what it took to be an explorer, and how thin skinned many of these people were. A really fascinating story.

Two things stick out. One a scene where the survivors come to Norway, who blame the Italians for the loss of one of their most loved heroes and an entire town being completely silent as the men left the ship. That must have been a truly amazing and scary scene. And learning about Louise Arner Boyd a rich American who financed her own travels to the Arctic and carried out scientific exploration and even was awarded a medal for her service in looking for the missing aviators. I had never heard of her, and really want to learn more. There are many suck moments in this book, and I highly recommend it both for aviation fans and for people who like to explore, even if it is from their favorite reading chair.