Against the backdrop of Mussolini's rising power, one of Italy's premier aeronautical engineers, Unberto Nobile, gained acclaim by crossing the North Pole in a dirigible. Buoyed by this success, Nobile decided in 1928 to raise the ante and take his newly designed airship to the North Pole, land it, and then return to base. But what started in glory turned to disaster when the airship crashed some 300 miles from civilization. With more than 30 years of research and interviews with surviving participants, Wilbur Cross presents this terrifying tale of tragedy and survival. Here is the story of the airship's survivors, who were stranded on a disintegrating ice floe, and of a determined international team of rescuers, including the famous Amundsen, whose desperate search for the missing Italians led to their own disaster. It is also the story of the controversy surrounding the rescue of Nobile while much of his crew perished in the icy wastelands of the Arctic. Filled with political intrigue, heroics and cruel twists of fate, Disaster at the Pole is an account of one of the greatest polar disasters.