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The North Pole has long held surprising importance for many of the world's cultures. Interweaving science and history, this book offers the first unified vision of how the North Pole has shaped everything from literature to the goals of political leaders - from Alexander the Great to neo-Hindu nationalists. Tracing the intersecting notions of poles, polarity, and the sacred from our most ancient civilizations to the present day, Michael Bravo explores how the idea of a North Pole has given rise to utopias, satires, fantasies, paradoxes, and nationalist ideologies across every era, from the Renaissance to the Third Reich. The Victorian conceit of the polar regions as a vast empty wilderness - a bastion of adventurous white males battling against the elements - is far from the only polar vision.