Fairly warned be thee, this is a Jonathan Franzen essay, so it's not everyone's cup of tea, but if you like lengthy light prose peppered with his usual shout-outs to degenerative diseases you're in luck.

Franzen went on a luxury cruise around the Falklands, South Georgia Island and the pointy bits of the Antarctic Peninsula. He is a keen bird-watcher. He has eyes of glass and the heart of a tape recorder. He found Antarctica beautiful and finds the notion of global warming slightly upsetting, but life goes on. The cruise was a bit over three weeks long, but he has known his family for much longer than that so they feature proportionally.

There are no photographs of Antarctica because he resolved ahead of time not to take any photographs. He did not make it to the end of the world, nor does he substantially discuss the end of said end.