About the book: year / Alexander Gervasievich Lebedenko entered literature in the twenties. Readers knew him then mainly as a publicist, often speaking on the pages of Leningrad newspapers and the magazine “Around the World” on issues of international politics. He was known to young readers from books in which he talked fascinatingly about his foreign travels. As a correspondent for Leningradskaya Pravda, Lebedenko sailed on the ship Franz Mehring around Europe. He took part in a flight, unprecedented for those years, on the route Moscow - Mongolia - Beijing. He flew on the airship "Norway" to the North Pole on the Leningrad-Kingsbay section (northern coast of the island of Spitsbergen). Lebedenko’s small illustrated book “To the Pole by Air” was especially successful. One day recently, fifty years after its publication, I re-read it. This historical essay has not lost its educational value even now. Although the book tells about numerous attempts to discover the pole, starting with the expedition of D. Franklin in the middle of the last century and ending with the first expeditions of F. Nansen and R. Amundsen, the personal experience of the author, who was able to detail and without embellishment, gives it artistic credibility and historical value. at the same time, in a very condensed form, tell about the unusually difficult, heroic flight on the airship "Norway».