Englishman Sir Ranulph Fiennes' account of his pole-to-pole circumnavigation of the globe (the first ever) is vividly described in his To the Ends of the Earth: The Transglobe Expedition. Fiennes returned in 1992 to ski across the continent with Dr Mike Stroud. Fiennes' account, Mind Over Matter, and Stroud's Shadows on the Wasteland offer complementary views of their difficult two-man journey.Italian Reinhold Messner, allegedly the world's greatest mountain climber, crossed Antarctica on skis with Arved Fuchs in 1989-90. His book Antarctica: Both Heaven and Hell details this extraordinary crossing.The very best general book on Antarctica is Readers Digest's Antarctica: The Extraordinary History of Man's Conquest of the Frozen Continent. It's quite a weighty tome, it's out of print and it's in hardcover only, but it's full of photographs, charts and facts. Two other goodies are The Greenpeace Book of Antarctica, by John May, and The Australian Geographic Book of Antarctica, by Keith Scott.There are various photographic books available, but perhaps the best is Wild Ice, which is compiled from the work of four noted photographers: Ron Naveen, Colin Monteath, Tui de Roy and Mark Jones, who between them have notched up over 70 separate Antarctic trips. Also worthwhile is Eliot Porter's Antarctica, which is made up of unusual shots taken by this photographer at the tender age of 73.Two essential publications for anyone thinking about sailing a yacht to Antarctica are Sailing Directions (Planning Guide & Enroute) for Antarctica and The Antarctic Pilot, both by Britain's Hydrographer of the Navy. Also good is Sally and Jerome Poncet's Southern Ocean Cruising.