Sweeping from the ancient world to the struggles that will shape the twenty-first century and beyond, Peter Frankopan puts Antarctica where it belongs: at the heart of the story of our world.

Antarctica is one of the great blind spots in how we see the world. Remote, frozen and supposedly empty, it has been largely ignored by historians. Yet the Seventh Continent, and the oceans and islands that surround it, have played a remarkable role in shaping the past – and they are becoming ever more important to the future.

For thousands of years, the invisible southern hemisphere fired the imaginations of philosophers, geographers and adventurers. Peter Frankopan takes us from the worlds of Plato and Aristotle to Magellan, Drake and Captain Cook; from the ambitions of European empires to the Heroic Age of Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen.

He reveals how the Southern Ocean became a vital artery of globalisation, with resources that helped fuel the Industrial Revolution. He uncovers Antarctica's surprising connections with Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Hitler, and shows how rivalry over territory and sovereignty drew the far south into the great twentieth-century conflicts.

This is also a story of science and power. Antarctica's role in the global climate system means it will help determine the conditions in which we all live in the years ahead. The Seventh Continent is also the only continent where states have agreed to international cooperation – at least in theory.

Now a series of new Great Games is unfolding, with low Earth orbit satellites, communications and missile defence, deep-space exploration, natural resources and scientific research transforming the polar regions. New players are joining, including India and, above all, China. Competition across the Southern Ocean is intensifying too, not least around the Falklands. There is a much larger story about sovereignty, resources and power in the far south than most realise.

Dazzling in its range and filled with an extraordinary cast of explorers, scientists, statesmen and dreamers, The Seventh Continent is trailblazing historian Peter Frankopan at his most exhilarating.