This second edition of the 1990 Library Journal "Best Reference" book, four years in the compiling and writing, is an exhaustive A-Z direct-entry encyclopedia of Antarctica. It doubles the first edition's entries to 30,000, covering geographical features, historical events, explorers, expeditions, airplanes, ships, scientists, scientific stations, tour operators, scientific terms, birds, animals, insects, flora, items of general interest and much more. "Antarctica" is defined as all land and water south of 60°S. Information for geographical features is drawn primarily from national gazetteers, both current and old, and is not limited to ­English-­language sources. Extensive cross-referencing simplifies the continent's often bewildering nomenclature--geographical features' names, for example, may vary widely from one national gazetteer to the next, and are further complicated by having been named and renamed multiple times, and in many languages, through the years. All linguistic variations of placenames are included and cross-referenced.