Robert Flaherty's groundbreaking "Nanook of the North" (1922) -- the chronicle of one year in the life of an Inuit hunter and his family in the Hudson Bay region -- was the first full-length anthropological documentary in cinematic history. Before Nanook, Flaherty endured a number of failures, disappointments, and false starts. Drawing from the unpublished diaries of Flaherty and his wife, Frances, Robert Christopher's biography fills in crucial background in the emergence of a documentary film legend. Previous biographical emphasis on Nanook has not only obscured Flaherty's early career but...