Editorial Review

The astonishing saga of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's survival for over a year on the ice-bound Antarctic seas, as "Time" magazine put it, "defined heroism". Alfred Lansing's scrupulously researched and brilliantly narrated book--with over 200,000 copies sold--has long been acknowledged as the definitive account of the "Endurance's" fateful trip. of photos and maps. Nationwide traveling museum exhibition. ... Read more

Reviews

Incredible
This is an absolutely amazing and true accounting of the 1914 Antarctic expedition gone to hell. It is clear that the author did an incredible amount of research, and though this book doesn't read like a novel, its presentation is much more powerful this way, giving a panoramic view of the whole terrible and desperate situation of these men.

I don't have any experience even comparable to what these men went through, the closest I've ever come is rowing down the coast of Maine in the summer in a 30 foot pulling boat, and I'll tell you, this guy gets every detail.

Anyway, an absolutely incredible look at human endurance, at what a person will go through if he must. I definitely recommend this book to everyone.

One note...make sure the version you buy or get at the library has expedition photographer Hurley's photographs in it. Some paperback editions don't, and you're really missing part of the experience without them.

Nothing is so bad that it can't get worse
This book is one of the few exceptional -absolutely execptional- tales of survival and it proves the maxim that nothing is so bad that it can't get worse. But also it proves that you can know the end of a story - it is a well known fact that Shackleton brought all his men through this arduous trial and all survived - and it doesn't spoil the story at all. Truth is not only stranger than fiction, but it is a good deal harder.

The bare-bones of the story are that Shackleton and his team left civillisation in 1914 in the Endurance to travel to attempt to reach the South Pole - a trip he had tried and failed by only a couple of hundred miles or so to achive in 1908. Amundsen had already reached the pole first but for Shackleton it was unfinished business. The Endurance had been built to push through the pack ice, but conditions proved too much and it was trapped in pack ice. Summer wore on and there was no escape - the winds were in the wrong direction - then winter hit and they were trapped in their boat. They settled in to a routine until the ice went against them and cracked the Endurance. Shackleton realised the only way out was on their own, so they abandoned the boat and made for the pack ice at first dragging the boats, then relying a floe to carry them north where they might find more supplies, or be rescued.

In the end they had to rescue themselves and this is the story of their indomitable courage and strength to survive under incredibly harsh conditions and in grave discomfort. We are talking about camping out in antartica - in less than adequate shelter, with essentially starvation rations, no heating, barely adequate clothing.

Lansing tells this story in a sparing style and it really works. He has had access to (I think) all the diaries available from men who kept them on the trip and they are very revealing of both personalities and foibles of the various characters who made up the trip - and these aren't all a bunch of saintly characters pulling together for the sake of their team and mutual survival - they fight, some are occassionally selfish, they love their dogs but have almost no compunction of putting them down when they have to - and they are very real and human.

Lansing also brings to light some of the things you wouldn't think about it - the incredible boredom that they all felt, that they were generally alternatvely wracked by either gripping hunger or desparate need for survival and how to escape - the one emotion replacing the other depending on conditions. He also explains some of the things you wouldn't even think to ask - how they went to the toilet for instance, the conditions inside the huts and the tents and so on. It brings a very vivd picture of life as it must have been for the group.

And really, nothing isn't so bad that it can't get worse. Each time you think that Shackleton is about to win there is a small disaster, or the elements go against them - they are constantly battling for their lives with decreasing odds of their survival. Even once they make it off the floe and onto land they have to move again to a safer landing place - and then they must work out how to get help. The nearest land is Chile some 500 miles away but it is almost impossible to get to because of wind and current, so they must try to South Georgia, over 800 miles away and a tiny speck of an island 25 miles across and they only thing in their way between Antartica and South Africa. Hardly an easy thing find in an open 22 foot boat. I know recently they tried to re-enact the voyage of Shackleton in his tiny boat - the James Caird - but without success as storms forced them to abandon the attempt. And that was a luxury trip compared to Shackleton's - the conditions on board were appalling - with stones for ballast - very little room and the ever present rotting reindeer hair from their sleeping bags. It is all credit to their navigator Frank Worsley that they reached South Georgia at all....but then they had had to land on the wrong side of the island due to conditions......but read the book - definitely read it.....

This book would make a great adventure book to introduce Antarctic exploration for younger children or teenagers as it is so vivid and so exciting. They are chased by killer whales and leopard seals, they are constantly fighting the elements and they are if nothing else a very human group of people. This is one of the best books of survival I have ever read and is highly recommended.

Required Reading for the cynical and jaded
I first became interested in Shackleton's incredible story after seeing photos and a short version of Caroline Alexander's book in the National Geographic a couple of years ago. Since then, I've read and reread Lansing's account, as well as Alexander's, and twice seen the new Butler documentary which incorporates the photos and early film of the expedition's photographer, Frank Hurley.

This is quite simply one of the most amazing stories I've ever read. Survival in the face of incredible hardship. Astonishing bravery, persistence, and resourcefulness, all in the face of unimaginable bad luck. This story should have ended in death at least five times. Instead, after 16 (or 20, depending on who you're counting for) months marooned in the antarctic circle, not a single member of Shackleton's crew was lost.

Lansing's account is creditable and more interesting than Alexander's, though her book has the better pictures. I'd suggest buying both.

An Antidote for the Age of Whining and Self-Absorption
Everything that defines courage and leadership for our age and any other is within the 280 pages of this wonderful book. For nearly two years, in conditions of constant zero and below cold, freezing wet, and often hunger, Ernest Shackleton kept all 27 men who sailed with him on the Endurance alive to eventually return to the England they left on the verge of World War I. That single-minded devotion to his men should make this book required reading for every would-be politician and corporate executive before he dares ask for the faith, trust and respect of those he would lead.

Lansing dedicated the book "In appreciation for whatever it is that makes men accomplish the impossible." He wisely and without flourish often lets the men's own words -- through the journals that many of them kept at the time and in interviews forty years later -- tell their extraordinary story, each stage of which reads more harrowing than the last. On an expedition that would have attempted to cross the Antarctic on foot (a feat not accomplished until four decades later), the Endurance is trapped in pack ice before it can reach shore. Shackleton's perhaps foolhardy original goal thus turns to keeping his men alive until they can be rescued. After ten months locked in the drifting pack, the Endurance is crushed and the men forced to abandon her for an ice floe, then several weeks later a smaller floe still. Eventually they take to three boats to reach forlorn Elephant Island from which Shackleton takes a skeleton crew of five and in a 22 foot open boat navigates the enormous seas of Drake's Passage to South Ascension Island. Once there he only (only!) has uncharted glaciers to cross to reach the whaling station on the other side of the island from which rescue of the Elephant Island castaways is eventually launched. The only other crossing of South Georgian Island by foot at the time Lansing wrote in 1959 occurred on a "easier" route with equipment and time. Shackleton had neither, only a fifty foot piece of rope, a carpenter's adze, and the knowledge that to stop moving was to invite death by freezing. At journey's end, to the astonished manager of the whaling factory, he says simply, "My name is Shackleton." I would have liked to have known him and all his men.

Startling good read
Whew!! That's the first word that comes to my mind. It surfaced in my thoughts numerous times as I was reading this tale. This book is overwhelming. I had always heard tales about Shackleton and this was a most compelling read. I found myself unable to put it down. It just grabs a hold of you and won't let go. Alfred Lansing did a superb job of storytelling here. It is one of the most amazing tales of human courage and endurance ever written. This is a fabulous story. Sir Ernest Shackleton truly displayed extraordinary mettle in spite failing to achieve the initial objective. His leadership is undeniable. He held a crew together to endure the harshest climate on the planet. That the entire crew survived the venture is testament to the power of the human spirit. The will to survive can attain soaring heights as this tale suggests. Lansing attempts to get into the nature of the different men but he allows their diaries to dictate the writing. This is great because supposition by authors of nonfiction can be fatuous. Drawing excerpts from the diaries of the men is a way to draw upon the incredible human drama and psychology that must have unfolded in this venture. The obstacles encountered by the crew are staggering. The wind, the dampness, the bitter cold and the long months of darkness in the winter seem like more than any man should be able to stand. They slept in wet sleeping bags in sub-freezing temperature; ate unappetizing foods; and still managed to keep their hopes alive. These were not accommodations up to Hyatt standards. One wonders how many people today would be tough enough to triumph over these hardships. The pain, ennui and discomfort must have been staggering. I found myself just shaking my head with awe at numerous passages in the book. These are men who went to Hell and came back alive. That is remarkable in and of itself. This book is a classic account of one of man's most remarkable journeys. Read it and discover for yourself.

I couldn't put it down!
It's been a long time since I came across a book that I couldn't put down. Despite all the more recent books about Shackleton, Alfred Lansing's book is still wonderful. He creates a sort of suspense so you are constantly wondering what will happen next to this band of star-crossed but determined explorers, what harrowing hardship will they overcome next? . I couldn't help musing whether I would behave as bravely in their situation. A great read!

"Man proposes [God disposes]" ---diary entry
Endurance by Alfred Lansing was first published in 1959. The copy I have is a 26th printing which indicates how popular this book has been. It is an adventure story that is entirely historical. It covers the 1914/15 attempt of explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 to be the first to cross the Antarctic continent overland west to east. This goal was interrupted for good when their ship, the Endurance, became trapped in ice in the Weddell Sea. The call for adventure soon became a constant struggle for survival that lasted ten months. The crew set up camp on various ice floes only to be forced to move when the dreaded cracks appeared. Their progress towards land is controlled by the direction and force of the gales. Conditions change almost daily in the chaotic and brutal Antarctic climate. When the ice floes were no longer an option, the crew set out in three small boats taken on the voyage hoping to find land. Once land was found, the crew split up as six members took one of the small boats into the dreaded Drake Passage in the hopes of finding help. Both groups were in danger of not surviving the unforgiving environment.

Lansing bases his work on interviews with survivors and the waterlogged diaries several of them kept. He is thus able to provide the reader with details of the crew's day-to-day life. Everything from the personalities of various members to their diets, clothing, attempts at building shelters, etc. are described. I do not have knowledge of seafaring vocabulary or conditions, but Lansing is able to describe such things as the pressure caused by broken floes of ice (p.47) in a clear manner. As an historical event, this story needs no poetic license. It is one of the most suspenseful history books I have read. Just when things looked good for the crew, the tide turned and vice versa. After reading what all these 28 men went through, the ending, although surprisingly brief, was very moving.

The only part of the book that disappointed me was the ending. I wanted to know what happened to some of the main characters after their ordeal. The epilogue just covers the attempt to rescue the 22 members left on Elephant Island and goes no further. It seemed unfair to leave the story like that. Despite this shortcoming, I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in historical adventure. It is one of the best books of that ilk one will read. One interesting note: Shackleton's goal was not achieved until 1958, 40 years after Shackleton set out on the Endurance and a year before this book was first published. It is 282 pages and includes a short section of b&w photos and illustrations.

Put this one in the shopping cart and proceed to check out.
What are you waiting for? Don't delay any longer. Probably the best and most exciting book I have ever read. Not one dull spot in the whole book. Total engrossment word by word. From what I can tell this book is the most free flowing account of Shakelton's expedition, leaving out no major events from begining to end. This book makes you want to know what happened to each of these men after they all were rescued. It also leaves you wondering what happened to the other support boat that was part of the expedition. So now I'll have to read Shakelton's own book "South".

Reading in it's amazing best
This is a superbly written account of an Antarctic expedition led by Sir Ernest Shakleton on a ship named Endurance. It is trapped by ice and eventually crushed by it. In order to survive, the crew look toward it's leader for answers and the only chance at rescue is to make it to a whaling station that is more than 1500 miles away. Everything is frozen, the weather is the worst on earth and thats just the begining. It's all here, the amazing spirit that some humans show when pushed to the brink of death, starvation, freezing, thirst, tiredness to the deepest parts of one's existence, humor, friendship, respect, leadership, etc. How it must have been for these men to survive such a harrowing experience is beyond belief. If not because it was so well documented by the individual crew members who kept journals, indeed no one would beleive it. To have survived so many months floating on a moving, cracking, shifting, crushing ice floe only to have to undertake an 800 mile sea voyage in a 22 foot lifeboat in the most brutal ocean in the world where winds rarely fall below huricane force, find and land on a hellish coast of a small island easily missed. Then on foot and starving have to coss it on ground so treacherous that no one had crossed it before, or would dare again for another 50 yrs. A brutal reading that will leave you exhausted. Pass it on and share with your friends and family. ... Read more

Editorial Review

A dramatic chronicle of Antarctica's penguins that bears witness to climate changes that foreshadow our own future

The towering mountains and iceberg-filled seas of the western Antarctic Peninsula have for three decades formed the backdrop of scientist Bill Fraser's study of Adélie penguins. In that time, this breathtaking region has warmed faster than any place on earth, with profound consequences for the Adélies, the classic tuxedoed penguin that is dependent on sea ice to survive. During the Antarctic spring and summer of 2005-2006, author Fen Montaigne spent five months working on Fraser's field team, and he returned with a moving tale that chronicles the beauty of the wildest place on earth, the lives of the beloved Adélies, the saga of the discovery of the Antarctic Peninsula, and the story—told through Fraser's work—of how rising temperatures are swiftly changing this part of the world. Captivated by the tale of these polar penguins and a memorable field season in Antarctica, readers will come to understand that the fundamental changes Fraser has witnessed in the Antarctic will soon affect our lives.

Reviews

Once you start reading you can't stop. A great read., December 1, 2010
I read this on Mac Kindle and that was an experience. Now this book is a must for anyone interested in the Antarctic Peninsula and the impact of global warming on this land and wildlife. This book focus is the Adelie penguin however the author brings in the history of antarctic exploration as background. I know I loved this because we are off to the area in mid December and this was the perfect book to read before the trip. Also here is a link to his Blog [...]

Riveting Antarctic Adventure, December 22, 2010
Fen Montaigne's account of the impact of climate change on adelie penguins in Antarctica is absorbing not only for its mastery of this troubling yet poignant subject but also its vivid writing and story telling drive. The redoubtable Adelie population is dwindling and the likely culprit is human reliance on fossil fuels. Montaigne spent five months with researchers in Antarctica monitoring the dwindling colony of adelies. He skillfully weaves the history of Antarctic exploration, the science of global warming and adelie population trends, and the quirky personalities of the scientists themselves into a vivid tale that resonates for its clarity and depth. What makes the book special is the author's own reactions to what he sees and feels, along with his writerly descriptions of the strange creatures that inhabit this ethereally beautiful world. Like all good adventure stories this is a tale of discovery where the reader becomes a fellow traveler of the author, seeing what he sees with the same sense of astonishment and awe. The book has all the elements of a classic.

Fantastic and moving read, December 12, 2010

THis book is riveting. The difficulties these penguins face are practically insurmountable and they seem doomed to exinction in our lifetime. What millions of years of evolution developed is being destroyed by human beings in a couple of lifetimes. We must stop and focus primarily on the ecological well being of this planet and the creatures we are lucky to share it with. ... Read more

Editorial Review

In August 1914, days before the outbreak of the First World War, the renowned explorer Ernest Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven set sail for the South Atlantic in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize in the history of exploration: the first crossing on foot of the Antarctic continent. Weaving a treacherous path through the freezing Weddell Sea, they had come within eighty-five miles of their destination when their ship, Endurance, was trapped fast in the ice pack. Soon the ship was crushed like matchwood, leaving the crew stranded on the floes. Their ordeal would last for twenty months, and they would make two near-fatal attempts to escape by open boat before their final rescue.

Drawing upon previously unavailable sources, Caroline Alexander gives us a riveting account of Shackleton's expedition--one of history's greatest epics of survival. And she presents the astonishing work of Frank Hurley, the Australian photographer whose visual record of the adventure has never before been published comprehensively. Together, text and image re-create the terrible beauty of Antarctica, the awful destruction of the ship, and the crew's heroic daily struggle to stay alive, a miracle achieved largely through Shackleton's inspiring leadership.

The survival of Hurley's remarkable images is scarcely less miraculous: The original glass plate negatives, from which most of the book's illustrations are superbly reproduced, were stored in hermetically sealed cannisters that survived months on the ice floes, a week in an open boat on the polar seas, and several more months buried in the snows of a rocky outcrop called Elephant Island. Finally Hurley was forced to abandon his professional equipment; he captured some of the most unforgettable images of the struggle with a pocket camera and three rolls of Kodak film.

Published in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History's landmark exhibition on Shackleton's journey, The Endurance thrillingly recounts one of the last great adventures in the Heroic Age of exploration--perhaps the greatest of them all. ... Read more

Reviews

A Gripping and Beautiful Tale of Leadership, February 12, 2000
This is a truly gripping and beautiful book. The story of the voyage and survival of the Endurance, Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1914 expedition to traverse the Antarctic continent on foot, is truly awe-inspiring. The photographs of Frank Hurley, the expedition's photographer, are sublime and powerful. I can't recapture the magnitude or beauty of the book in a few words, but two things struck me as particularly moving. At one point, Shackleton and five men sailed 800 miles in a 22-foot boat through the tempestuous South Atlantic Ocean to reach help. I doubt that even Alexander's account of the voyage does justice to the courage, skill and fortitude exhibited by these men.

Two comments put this one piece of the survival struggle into perspective. Alexander comments, "They would later learn that a 500-ton steamer had foundered with all hands in the same hurricane they had just weathered." And upon reaching civilization for the first time, the captain of the Endurance, Frank Worsley records the reaction of some of the hardiest seamen in the world:

Three or four white-haired veterans of the sea came forward. One spoke in Norse, and the Manager translated. He said he had been at sea over 40 years; that he knew this stormy Southern Ocean intimately, from South Georgia to Cape Horn, from Elephant Island to the South Orkneys, and that never had he heard of such a wonderful feat of daring seamanship as bringing the 22-foot open boat from Elephant Island to South Georgia.... All the seamen present then came forward and solemnly shook hands with us in turn. Coming from brother seamen, men of our own cloth and members of a great seafaring race like the Norwegians, this was a wonderful tribute. (The Endurance, pages 166-167).

The second thing I found so moving about Alexander's account was the skillful and authentic way she weaves Hurley's unbelievably stark and beautiful photographs into the fabric of this story. Most moving of all, though, is the absence of photographs during the voyage described above. Shackleton, who lived and led for his men, left them to bring help, and it is somehow fitting that we have the same sense of solitude and lack the tangibility of a photograph to reassure us about the well-being of the 22 men left behind.

Shackleton ("the Boss") to his men, was a true leader. In her conclusion, Alexander writes of him, "He would be remembered not so much for his own accomplishment -- the 1909 expedition that attained the farthest South -- as for what he was capable of drawing out of others." She goes on to quote Worsley:

Shackleton's popularity among those he led was due to the fact that he was not the sort of man who could do only big and spectacular things. When occasion demanded he would attend personally to the smallest details.... Sometimes it would appear to the thoughtless that his care amounted almost to fussiness, and it was only afterwards that we understood the supreme importance of his ceaseless watchfulness. (The Endurance, pages 193-194).

Alexander goes on to say, "Behind every calculated word and gesture lay the single-minded determination to do what was best for his men. At the core of Shackleton's gift for leadership in crisis was...the fact that he elicited from his men strength and endurance they had never imagined they possessed; he ennobled them."

I think the most interesting passages with respect to his leadership are those that deal with the obvious INCREASED strain that Shackleton experienced after HE was safe but 22 of his men remained stranded on Elephant Island, even after 2 attempts to reach them. Again, Worsley's insight is revealing: "The wear and tear of this period was dreadful. To Shackleton it was little less than maddening. Lines scored themselves on his face more deeply day by day; his thick, dark, wavy hair was becoming silver. He had not had a grey hair when we started out to rescue our men the first time. Now on the third journey, he was grey-haired."

When Shackleton finally reached Elephant Island and realized that all his men had survived, Worsley writes, "He put his glasses back in their case and turned to me, his face showing more emotion than I had ever known it show before...we were all unable to speak. It sounds trite, but years literally seemed to drop from him as he stood before us."

In my estimation, this is the true quality of a leader: he leads his people, but more than anything, he leads FOR his people.

Could have been better, August 30, 1999
The story of Shakleton's Endurance expedition is my all-time favorite, having discovered it after I found out that my ancestor was one of the heros (Tom Crean). This book's highlights were the extra unpublished photographs and the details of the lives of the survivors after they made it back to civilisation. However this books fault (and a major one) is that it details the time on the Endurance and on the ice floes at the expense of the stories about the two boat journeys and the crossing of South Georgia. The crossings of Drake passage and South Georgia are almost rushed through (I can't even remember Drakes Passage even being mentioned). All the drama of the voyage of the James Caird, probably the greatest boat voyage ever undertaked, and the brilliance of Worsley's navigation are completely lost in the authors effort to tell us about the lives of the men on Elephant Island, especially Hurley of whom she is particularly fond. Frank Worsley's 'Shackleton's Boat Voyage' conveys all the drama and excitement of the voyage of the James Caird in vivid detail, while Alfred Lansings' 'Endurance' is without a doubt the best book written on the subject, a book I couldn't put down for a second, and I knew how it ended.

THE BEST BOOK!! YOU MUST READ IT!!, October 14, 1999
The Endurance by Caroline Alexander is a non fiction book about an explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew as they try to become the first explorers to cross Antarctica on foot. Sir Ernest Shackleton was one of the most known polar explorers of his day. Shackleton and his crew of 27 set out to sea on his boat Endurance on August 8th, 1914. The 28 men went down to Buenos Aries, Argentina then they continued to their last stop South Georgia Island which is in the southern Atlantic before they went to the pack ice and beyond. Once they got the ship into the pack ice they followed the cracks between each floe (leads) to try to get to the main land of Antarctica. Do they ever get home to England? Do they all even survive such a journey? This book was a heart racing kind of book. If you previously were not interested in history books The Endurance might change your opinion. I was impressed by how these men risked their lives freezing to death just to obtain their personal goals. The adventure of when they have to abandon ship will leave you hanging from your seat. The way Caroline Alexander wrote the book was engulfing . Her detail was thorough and she must have put many months of research on their journey. She also used clips from journals telling in the sailor's words what was happening and what was going on in their minds. I have read a few books about sailing the sea and The Endurance was the best one because of the way in which it was written. The photographer Frank Hurley took unbelievable shots of the whole expedition. The types of photos that were taken included, black & white stills, movies and color slides. The photographs look like they were taken recently by a digital camera instead of a Kodak in the early 1900's. Technically the pictures are crisp and clear for surviving the 22-month journey. This is a book that should be in every school library and all public libraries so everyone can experience The Endurance.

Better than Lansing, October 26, 2000
After reading this book, I bought and read the "classic" by Alfred Lansing and while it was a very good read, I believe Alexander's book to be the better one. She includes details about the crew and Shackleton and about their post-voyage lives that makes the story much more personal. In addition, she includes details of the journey which were left out of Lansing's book which left me with the impression that Lansing was "protecting" Shackleton against possible negative or critical comments--an entirely unnecessary thing to do given his incredible leadership of this voyage. For example, Lansing's book does not talk about the mental breakdown of several of the men after the boat trip to Elephant Isle nor about McNish's resentment of Shackleton for having to kill Mrs. Chippy. Nor does he mention Shackleton's and the other crew member's claims to have felt a "fourth presence" with them on the last climb over the mountains of S. Georgia. These details, together with the incredible photography included in Alexander's book, make her book the more complete and equally exciting rendition of this incredible voyage.

You've read the book, now go see the exhibition!, July 9, 2000
Caroline Alexander, author of this extraordinary book filled with breathtaking photographs, is guest curator of the traveling museum exhibition "The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition." As unforgettable as the book is, the exhibition is even more spectacular! The greatly enlarged copies of the photographs, combined with artifacts, diaries, a reproduction of the James Caird lifeboat (frighteningly small) , and personal memorabilia contributed by the families of these explorers make Shackleton's voyage tangible, very much more than something in a book, even one as good as this one.

For those interested in seeing the exhibition, it is at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA from June 23 - Sept. 10, 2000. It will be at the Field Museum in Chicago from October 7 - Jan. 14, 2001. It will be at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences from Feb. 10 - May 6, 2001, and it will be at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington (in Seattle) from June 7 - Dec. 31, 2001.

Oustanding photographs, May 16, 1999
The story of Shakleton's trip to the antarctic is another truly amazing story of survival and recounts one of the last "heroic" adventures of exploring our globe. The event at its time was overshadowed by WW I, but for nearly two years Shakelton and his crew remained either ice bound or adrift on ice flows until landing on uninhabited Elephant Island. From there Shakleton and a small crew crossed the south Atlantic in an open boat in terrifying conditions, made an improbable land fall and were able to effect rescue of the entire crew without a single fatality. In todays world of synthetic fleece, goretex, lihtweight, waterproof thermally efficient gear it is nearly incomprehensible to imagine being cold and wet for two years in antarctic conditions, and surviving. This is a great story of human forbearance, patience, endurance and faith. The writing is a bit flat and at times it seems drudgery to get through, but the story is compelling. The writing is based on diaries and other accounts are heavily utilized. It is the great photography of voyage photographer Frank Hurley that makes this book rank 4 stars by our book club. Readers in our group also read Lansing's account and felt it to be a superior writing of the ill-fated voyage.

Read Alfred Lansing's Book, August 15, 2005
Several days after purchasing Caroline Alexander's, "The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition" from Amazon.com, I read a few customer reviews that recommended Alfred Lansing's 1959 classic: "Endurance: Shakelton's Incredible Journey." These reviews extolled Lansing's book, and pointed-out how Alexander's was essentially a rewrite of this earlier work. Consequently, I also purchased his book, and thoroughly enjoyed reading the two of them while on vacation a few weeks ago. (I had already begun Alexander's book -- so, completed it before beginning Lansing's.)

Alexander's book has one (and only one) distinct and obvious advantage over Lansing's -- the inclusion of scores of the original expedition photographs taken by Frank Hurley (the ship's photographer). These photos are incredible and make Alexander's book indispensable to anyone interested in Shakelton's Endurance expedition.

That said -- here's why I gave her book only ONE STAR. In the Acknowledgements" section of her book, Alexander makes only a one sentence reference to Lansing's earlier work -- something to the effect of, "An exciting sea adventure." (although more elaborately stated).

Yet, Lansing's "Endurance: Shakelton's Incredible Journey" is a far better account of the Endurance expedition than is Alexander's -- better written, longer (maybe 50% more narrative), far more detailed in its entirety, much more interesting and exciting to read, PLUS: IT WAS FIRST..!!

It surprises me that Alexander paid no real tribute to Lansing's earlier work -- which in many respects seems to have been simply reworded by Alexander. There are, for certain, some substantive differences between the two books (owing the the large amount of source materials, including crew diaries) -- but, on the whole, these are not of real significance; and on balance, Lansing's book tells the entire story much better than Alexander's and is a much more exciting read.

So, buy them both -- Alexander's for the photographs and supplemental information and Lansing's for the tremendous narrative and historical significance. But please Caroline: Give credit where credit is due...

Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antartic Expedition, January 30, 2000
I first read this book, and then I read Alfred Lansing's "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage." I enjoyed the pictures in this book, but found Lansing's description of the journey more engaging. My recommendation is to read Lansing's book together with using the pictures and maps in this book to help visualize the writers' stories.

Your human spirit will live with this book, January 3, 1999
Caroline Alexander's book touches something deep within our human spirit; challenge, hope, survival and love of life. For those who love to challenge themselves by the outdoors with the hope of great rewards these experiences can bring, read this book to understand how these pursuits can also provide very real dangers, except in this book the dangers go beyond one's imagination - twenty-two months in wet, sub-freezing conditions on ice, frozen lands and the Antartic's violent oceans.

If you have read or enjoy reading books and adventures like Krakauer's "Into Thin Air," this book is a MUST read.

Frank Hurley's photographs are excellent. Frank Hurley's committment to taking these pictures is unbelievable when considering the environmental conditions of this part of the world.

My emotions rose and fell with the reading of "The Endurance." The book is a well-written tribute to the 28 men of the expedition. These men are adventurers and heroes beyond description. I was pleased with Ms. Alexander's afterword, which described what became of each of them after their rescue, this completed the story.

A good introduction to the Endurance epic, June 11, 2000
This is the book that really started the current round of "Shackleton-mania" and it is a good introduction to the story of the Endurance Expedition, well written, researched, and, of course, beautifully illustrated with the classic photography of Frank Hurley. But it's important to view it only as an introduction. Heacox' "Shackleton-The Antarctic Challenge" goes into more detail, and Shackleton's own books "South" and "Heart of the Antarctic" are also must-reads, while Lennard Bickel's "Shackleton's Forgotten Men" chronicles the little-known adventures of the Ross Sea party of the Endurance Expedition. So if this book leaves you wanting more, go on to those other titles. Alexander's book also suffers badly from not having an index. I still highly recommend it for its writing style and the wonderful reproductions of Hurley's photographs. ... Read more

Editorial Review

From avalanches to glaciers, from seals to snowflakes, and from Shackleton's expedition to "The Year Without Summer," Bill Streever journeys through history, myth, geography, and ecology in a year-long search for cold--real, icy, 40-below cold. In July he finds it while taking a dip in a 35-degree Arctic swimming hole; in September while excavating our planet's ancient and not so ancient ice ages; and in October while exploring hibernation habits in animals, from humans to wood frogs to bears.

A scientist whose passion for cold runs red hot, Streever is a wondrous guide: he conjures woolly mammoth carcasses and the ice-age Clovis tribe from melting glaciers, and he evokes blizzards so wild readers may freeze--limb by vicarious limb. ... Read more

Reviews

Shades of Farley Mowat!, August 9, 2009
Having spent a few short weeks (way, way too short an amount of time!) in the Arctic, reading this book makes me ache to return. I missed so much - I was so clueless! Reading "Cold - Adventures in the World's Frozen Places" was a very unexpected delight! I am not usually a reader of non-fiction, but this book was so interesting and well writen. The language is rich and well developed, the stories are great, the science is fascinating and most importantly, you can easily tell how much the author loves everything cold, but especially Alaska and the far north.

new generation of eco-criticism, August 5, 2009
This is a beautiful, evocative book about not just the science or experience of cold but the poetics of the chill. Mr. Streever is an accomplished scientist and nature writer, and this book goes beyond his previous publications to embrace the science and the spirit of the outdoors. Throughout the book, he blends technical observation with historical reference, literary allusion, and personal memoir. Writing of this kind moves beyond the generation of John McPhee -- with its precise detachment and patrician elegance -- and it moves beyond, too, the exhortations of Bill McKibben. IF there is a future for eco-criticism, it may lie precisely in the fractured narrative of Streever's Alaska. In many ways, the arc of the book captures what must be the Alaskan experience: a collection of memories and materials, brought in from "outside," and reassembled into public spaces and private imaginations. It may well be that the the book's controlling structure, then, mirrors the midnight-sun pastiche that is this state, and it's good to know that, whatever the politics may be on that peninsula, there is a profound sensitivity to life and writing among people such as Mr. Streever.

Warmth for Cold, August 6, 2009
With so much heat in our future -- global warming, Dante's Inferno, the aging Sun enlarging to swallow the Earth -- why should cold be such a fascinating topic? In long, long time, a leading theory of the end of the universe called "heat death" says that absolute cold is the fate of us all -- or at least of our atomic remains. Cold, in other words, is the natural order of things.

Streever does a great job of describing the effects of this inevitability in this intellectually compelling yet entertaining book. We read that the Earth was itself once a frozen planet "only" 700m years back (the Earth is 4.5b years old). We see how life is impacted by and adjusts itself to the effects of cold. We see how cold ends life when these adjustments fail. And sometimes, as is the case with mammoths, cold preserves specimens for millennia to teach us about life in the distant past.

The scientist/author is an Alaskan and the book is accordingly heavy with Alaska references, but there is about an equal portion of references from the rest of the planet. He writes stylishly in something of a journal format.

It's a great read.

A Place You'll Never Be, August 31, 2009
Bill Streever's "Cold: Adventures in the World's Coldest Places," is at once a splendid travel narrative and a sort of "Cryogenics For Dummies." Streever has that unique ability to convey complex scientific principles and theories in an accessible and readable manner. More than this, though, he delievers highly evocative descriptions of landscapes and nature, or cities and citizens, and he includes plenty of subtle wit and dry humor.

Sentences such as "The red fox, the tiger, the wolf, the wolverine, and the raven all cross biome boundaries as if they did not exist, as if they have never read an ecology textbook or studied a biome map," can be, for the right kind of reader, laugh-out-loud funny.

Or try this for understated whimsy: "On the mountainsides above Anchorage, chinook winds can reach hurricane strength. The loss of roofs from hillside houses is not unknown, giving wealthy homeowners exceptional but unexpected views of crisp winter skies."

Much of the last quarter of the book is devoted to global warming. Though he makes his position clear, Streever is not an ideologue, content to discuss the facts, contemplate the consequences, and ultimately, to acknowledge that even in the worst case scenario, we occupy a minuscule slice in the grand sweep of time.

Take a Vicarious Winter-Swimming Plunge: Read "Cold", August 9, 2009
In "Cold" Streever, a modern-day wonderer and wanderer of the North, documents, with Nordic poeticism of Knut Hamsun, the challenge and the opportunity of cold. The book is replete with intriguing "cold" trivia that prompt a range of unexpected reading associations (ranging from cosmic to existential). Perhaps, the only cold-factoid Streever overlooked is the one about naked Tibetan monks drying up icy-wet sheets in the middle of winter by having somehow figured out how to burn off the "brown" fat on demand. As a cold-shower "fanatic" and an occasional winter-swimmer myself, I enjoyed reading "Cold" in the first week of August as a kind of vicarious winter-swimming dip. Take a plunge: read "Cold."
Pavel Somov, Ph.D.

[...]

If You Learn Absolutely Zero From This Book Then Your Brain Must Be Frostbitten, September 6, 2009
This book is a refreshing blast of cold air.For someone who is familiar with much of both Arctic and Antarctic issues, I was impressed with obtaining more information on both supra and subnivean topics. Weather,climate,animal migration and winter habits,permafrost and various other sundry topics polar and non- polar are touched upon.Global warming was also addressed in a non threatening circuitous way as well as exploration past and present with some references to the giants of polar history and their work within the deep, cold, interiors.Particularly interesting was the discussion of the conquest of cold which is the title of another wonderful book by the same name written by Tom Shachtman back in 1999 which I read and is referred to by Mr.Streever several times and should be read after this one if your interest grows deeper.Cold is well written by a scientist over the course of a years time with globe trotting observations but always returning to his home state of Alaska in what appears to be a sort of grounding for him.The book itself imparts lots of facts and factoids that can only help not hinder one who studies the frigidly wonderful topic of cold.For those in the know this ground may have already been covered by you and some may find it lacking or just National Geographicalish in its approach. But sometimes old dogs can learn new tricks and books like this can generate new areas of inquiry and reference as it did for me. It helps keep it fresh to read new things even at the risk of going over old material.It is recommended as a good primer for the novice to further ones' appreciation of the ice and its expansive history as well as the problems it can cause and may give you a better admiration of your refrigerator or air conditioner for without those people who did the work, those individuals in history who said, "Gee whiz, its hot in here, my food is rotting and I'm sweating like a pig,what can I do about that"? Now you can erect an alter to the men who fixed that for you right in your own freezer.Be that as it may, I found it very enjoyable and breezed through it quite fast.It is written as if you were talking to a real lonely, arctic scientist who doesn't get out much and is both extremely happy and excited to find a willing, captive, listener as topics tend to pop up and drift into another rather fast but you'll be able to follow his bent.So button up with confidence with some useful information on insulating fabrics,ours and the Eskimo's.The mechanisms of frostbite or how the Bose-Einstein condensate, atoms that form at absolute zero,about 460 degrees F. may someday change the world. Read and learn about this facinating corner of science and warm up to the concept of cold.A cup of hot cocoa may be in order. Enjoy the summer while you can, an ice age may be coming soon and just think, if it does, you'll be ready for it.

Fascinating anecdotes, beautifully told, October 30, 2009
"Cold" by Bill Streever is a beautifully-written book, one of the best I have read in this genre.

Streever goes on a year-long quest for cold, with a Chapter devoted to each month. In each month he discusses particular "cold events" that occurred in the month, such as the severe US blizzard of January 1888 - the School Children's Blizzard.

These examples are interspersed with personal details of his own life and studies of cold as the year unfolds. In Streever's book this works well, and some of his descriptive passages are very evocative. This is a pleasant change from some other books in the genre that are simply vehicles for narcissistic display by the author. In "Cold" the subject enjoys the limelight, not the author elbowing the actors out of the way.

Some of Streever's anecdotes are truly surprising: lumps of ice falling out of the sky the size of a man in the 19th century, snowflakes 15 inches across. He explains how the Year Without a Summer (1815) contributed to the invention of the bicycle.

He gives an excellent account of hypothermia, and why some of its victims die soon after being rescued.

Streever lives in Alaska, and life there is very different to life in more temperate places. Houses sink as permafrost melts. People burn down their homes trying to un-freeze frozen pipes with blowtorches. Frost heave pushes posts out of the ground.

Most living tissue cannot survive being frozen. Streever gives some graphic accounts of how freezing affects cells. So I am not too optimistic for the future of James Bedford, who has been stored in liquid nitrogen since 1967, awaiting a cure for cancer.

Remarkably, a surprising number of living creatures can survive freezing. There is a caterpillar in Alaska that routinely "hibernates" over winter by freezing solid, and thawing out in spring to go about its business. Some frogs freeze. The most striking example of cold tolerance is the African desert fly that can even survive liquid helium at -450 degrees F.

When skiing I get ravenously hungry. Streever explains why this is so. Apart from the calories needed to sustain vigorous exercise, we also need a remarkable amount of energy simply to counteract the effects of cold. Early Polar explorers did not appreciate this aspect of nutrition sufficiently when planning food supplies for their expeditions and many died because they simply did not have enough food.

One could go on listing the fascinating aspects of cold discussed in the book. Naturally, not everything can be included. But I would have liked some mention of cold-induced brittle fracture of Liberty ships in World War 2. Twelve Liberty ships broke in half without warning because the grade of steel used suffered from embrittlement. Ships in the North Atlantic were exposed to temperatures that could fall below a critical point and thus the hull could fracture relatively easily.

Strange worlds of cold, October 19, 2009
Thoroughly fascinating read. Streever exposes a most peculiar world that few of us will experience. If there's any criticism I can levy toward the book it's that I wanted more. When you're sorry you've reached the end, that's a good sign to me. I recommend this highly to anyone with an interest in the natural world.

Cold is Cool, September 3, 2009
You can bet that Bill Streever likes cold better than you do. After all, standing in his swimming shorts in wind, rain, and a chill of 51 degrees, he plunges into the 35 degree water of Prudhoe Bay, three hundred miles above the Arctic Circle, for five minutes. You won't be surprised that he finds it cold, bitingly cold, but advises us that it's not really so cold, in the scheme of things - it is much warmer than a block of dry ice, which is warmer than liquid nitrogen, which is warmer than the surface of Pluto. After five minutes in the water, shivering, he emerges, but it is two hours before he feels warm again. His dip is just the starting immersion into cold in _Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places_ (Little, Brown). Streever is a biologist who works on various surveys and committees, many having to do with climate and climate change. "Cold is cool," he says, and his book emphasizes how interesting low temperatures are, with the way animals have evolved to handle them and the way humans have pioneered into polar regions. There is, however, a good deal of grim death here, from frozen mammoths to explorers to cryogenically frozen corpses. Streever can write poetically, and always has a good humor. His book is full of science, but it is casually written in twelve chapters, each accounting for a month in which he tells us of his travels and interests in the cold regions. It is discursive, with one topic or anecdote popping up in different aspects in different chapters, a friendly and informative science book.

For instance, Streever frequently returns to James Bedford, who died of cancer in 1967, but who is lying around at 367 degrees below zero, waiting for a cancer cure. Ice crystals have damaged the cells too much for Bedford's life to return, but maybe he just viewed that as a problem that future scientists will solve, along with curing his cancer. He might have taken heart from the members of the animal kingdom who so intrigue Streever. For instance, frogs freeze. Not all frogs, just those specially adapted to do so. "To be clear, these are not frogs that are cold, but frogs that are literally frozen. Pick them up, and they are hard as ice." They have ice between their cells and in body cavities, but the cells themselves are so full of glucose as an antifreeze that the ice does not shred them. They are, Streever says, "frogsicles". Streever has been absorbed by the journals kept by the great polar explorers. "When one reads past the stoicism and heroics, the history of polar exploration becomes one long accident report mixed with one long obituary." If the extremes of earthly cold are not enough, Streever introduces us to some of the scientists who are pushing the thermometer as close to the bottom as it can ever go. Cold is the absence of heat, the absence of molecular motion, and there might not seem to be any logical reason that the molecules and their constituent atoms should all stand still at absolute zero. This temperature, which is 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, seems to be unattainable; a couple of thousand atoms have been cooled to within fifty-billionths of a degree of this goal, but getting all the way there has so far proved impossible.

Streever manages a review of our understanding of the deep history of climate. 700 million years ago, there was a mean temperature of minus sixty degrees, according to the "Snowball Earth" idea, which Streever presents as science strongly colored by the forceful personality of the man who first proposed it. He takes us through the ice ages, and the effects of ancient glaciation on the geology of different parts of the world. He invokes the "Little Ice Age", which started in the fourteenth century and continued to the mid-nineteenth. It included the enormous eruption of the Indonesian Tambora volcano in 1815, which among other things, chilled the weather so that Lord Byron's guests had to hole up in his retreat near Geneva in 1816, telling ghost stories. This included Mary Shelley, who came up with _Frankenstein_; the movies don't show that much of the novel involves an Arctic setting complete with an explorer and his boat. Of course Streever covers global warming, late into his year-long exploration of cold regions, explaining the positions of the "climate change kooks" and the "naysayers", but of course he sides on the compelling data that the warming is real. He notes, however, that the warming is not even; changes in ocean currents may actually cool Europe and even the Antarctic interior. "There will still be opportunities to wear a double layer of caribou skin," he reflects, and you can count on Streever to take them.

Great read, August 20, 2009
2 mitten-enclosed thumbs up on this book. If you are looking for a sublime description of sublimation...you have found it. I have never been north of the Artic circle but after reading this first rate book, I've put it on the *list*. Even though it is the height of summer in the northern hemisphere, there is never a better time to curl up with this book. ... Read more

Editorial Review

The Worst Journey in the World recounts Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Apsley Cherry-Garrard—the youngest member of Scott’s team and one of three men to make and survive the notorious Winter Journey—draws on his firsthand experiences as well as the diaries of his compatriots to create a stirring and detailed account of Scott’s legendary expedition. Cherry himself would be among the search party that discovered the corpses of Scott and his men, who had long since perished from starvation and brutal cold. It is through Cherry’s insightful narrative and keen descriptions that Scott and the other members of the expedition are fully memorialized. ... Read more

Reviews

Thrilling and tragic, January 22, 2008
Apsley Cherry-Garrard was only 24 when he set out on Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova expedition. He was the youngest member of the group and, for my money, the best qualified for the later task of writing the complete story. Why? The Worst Journey in the World is an awe-inspiring adventure, told in such a way that you feel the young man's wide-eyed wonder as your own.

Very few novels have gripped and excited me as this book has, and far fewer nonfiction works. Cherry--as his friends called him--writes with a vigor and attention to detail and drama usually reserved for thrillers. The blizzards, storms at sea, killer whale attacks, sub-zero temperatures, and exhausting struggles with sled dogs, ponies, and yawning crevasses are vividly depicted. By the end of the book, you almost feel as though you've been on the journey with him. The "you are there" phenomenon is something I encounter very seldom in a book. This book actually managed to make me cold.

The Worst Journey in the World is not solely devoted to the adventure and the final tragedy of finding Scott and his men frozen to death. Cherry takes time out to comment on the scientific significance of their work in Antarctica, of the need for exploration regardless of immediate results, and, in conclusion, of why Scott's return from the Pole ended so bitterly. These sections of the work put the adventure into perspective, so that not only do you experience the good and bad times with the expedition, you learn what ideals drove them and what was at stake with every piece of bad luck.

The book isn't perfect, of course. Some of the scientific information Cherry relates is, of course, now outdated. The book starts off rather slowly, and the reader must pick up and remember the names of the other expeditionary members on their own--Cherry does not list or describe the others in detail until somewhere near the middle of the book.

That said, The Worst Journey in the World is still an outstanding nonfiction adventure. Once I started this book I could read nothing else. Anyone with an interest in the Antarctic, history, or exploration in general will find this book fascinating.

Highly recommended.

An Adventure book Inside a History Book, April 6, 2006
In 1911-1912 the author as a young man was part of the ill fated
Robert Falcon Scott British Expedition to be the "first" at the South Pole. The larger history of that effort's limited success and the stories of the lives lost is a well told as historical fact. Within the book lies the Chapter about the author's effort with two other companions to travel in a winter journey for the purpose of observing Emperor penguins in their nesting rookeries. This is the coldest journey "on record" with howling winds at -70 degrees f under total darkness climbing between open crevasses that were endlessly deep to retrieve a few unhatched eggs for scientific research. Once you've read this author's rendition of that "worst journey" no other adventure travelog can compare. Good reading and most unforgettable.

In this case, Worst Journey is no conceit, May 3, 2008
It's been more than ten years since I read Cherry-Garrard's account of Scott's journey to Antarctica, but I can still feel the lung-searing cold and hear the hellish, monstrous wind coming out of the center of the continent into which the journey was headed. I have never read of anything more terrible than this expedition including Shackleton's truncated Antarctic nightmare and Lewis and Clark's astonishing and dangerous overland haul from St. Louis to the Pacific.

This particular expedition was one terrible misadventure after another almost from the very start when there is a storm at sea right out of the gate as the ship carrying everyone and everything from Tierra del Fuego is swamped and so much food, materiel, and livestock are lost overboard. From there the bad luck never seems to stop. The very fact that these men continued on under circumstances that would have discouraged and then defeated most human beings is almost past credibility. In particular I remember the constant breaking down of the diesel-engined snow cats, the terrible fate of the Asian ponies, the leopard seals, and the long dark impossible trip that Garrard and one other member of the expedition take in the dead of the Antarctic winter to the Emperor Penguin breeding grounds to retrieve a few precious eggs for science. In winter. In the dark. Wearing 1911 woolen clothes, eating preseved 1911 food, and using 1911 (non-)technology. It took 1911 men to do it. I cannot imagine anyone from our time doing this with that equipment. At times I simply had to stop reading and wonder just how much more hardship human beings could stand. I've never felt so physically uncomfortable, so drained and so worried (as a mere reader!) as I was ploughing through this book which was a feat (the writing of it) in itself.

This is a story about a long-vanished era where grit and determination were measured on a different scale from what we see today. An absolute must for any lover of true adventure. It truly was the worst journey in the world against which any subsequent mission of its kind - including extra-terrestrial - must be judged.

One of the Best!, December 27, 2006
This book is the author's account of his own journey to find the Emperor penguins nesting grounds in the Antarctic winter, set into the context of Scott's final journey to the South Pole.

As should any really good book, it opened doors to new learning, as it informed about a subject about which I previously knew little, with interest level to match.

What struck me most is reading about unusual Antarctic ice melt conditons nearly 100 years ago, when human-induced 'global warming' could not have been an issue, at least so far as vehicle (and aircraft) pollution is concerned. I could be wrong, of course, but I began to see a bigger picture. That global warming is real and that polluting is bad are givens; that we can do much about the former is likely a conceit.

Also fascinating were the accounts of the nature of killer whales: Prior to this, I had assumed all killer whales were the loveable scamps shown in marine theme parks. Now? I give them a wide berth.

Apsley-Garrard's high regard for his fellow explorers and his gift for description make this book a joy to read. I only wish the editor/publisher had included (preferably inside the front or back cover) a proper map or graphic listing the place names mentioned in the text. The reader has to keep guessing, flipping or seeking out another map source to follow the journeys.

National Geographic ranks this book first on its list of the 100 greatest adventure books of all time. Also, see the DVD March of the Penguins, for the excellent 53-minute film on the making of the movie. This will give some idea of current challenges on a Winter Journey.

Information about editions, January 6, 2009
`The Worst Journey in the World` (1922) is often cited as a masterpiece of travel literature. It is number one on National Geographic's list of 100 all time best travel literature, and is the first title in the prestigious Picador Travel Classics series. A. Alvarez has praised its "perfect prose: lucid, vivid, bone-simple, and full of feeling." The expedition was literary from the start and the "good modern fiction" the party brought along included Thackery, Charlotte Bronte, Bulwer-Lytton and Dickens. The poetry packed to the pole on the final fateful journey was Browning and Tennyson. Authors who stirred discussions included Shaw and Wells. Authors who were friends with members of the expedition included Galsworthy and Barrie. Robert Louis Stevenson is often mentioned. Each of the chapters of the book begins with poetry fragment from Shakespeare, Browning, Huxley, etc.. even the structure of the book is literary, re-telling the same events from different perspectives, building up to the climatic discovery of the fate of Scott. Cherry himself often delights with brilliant insightful views on travel, man, the meaning of life. This is Travel "Literature" with a capital L.

Apsley Cherry-Garrad ("Cherry") was the wealthy heir of two estates who joined Scott's team as an assistant zoologist at the age of 24. He was educated at Oxford in Classics and modern history. In the tradition of the British amateur explorer he took on multiple roles, ultimately becoming the expeditions historian. He wrote Journey using the diaries of the team in the years after WWI while recovering from an illness.

From their base camp at McMurdo Sound the three-year expedition made a number of trips composed of different groups. The trip to the pole by Scott is the most famous, but there were others. The title of the book, "Worst Journey", actually refers to a 67-mile 5-week trip by three members, including Cherry, in what at the time was twice as long as any previous Antarctic journey on the open ice. It only composes about 1/8th of the books length but is probably the most remarkable. They survived -70 degree temperatures and hurricane storms with primitive gear made from leather and canvas while man-hauling multi-hundred pound sleds and living on 4000 calories or less per day of nearly vitamin-free biscuits and pemmican (considered "adequate" at the time, today twice that is usual for explorers). Cherry interlaces his narrative with allusions to Dante, The Pilgrims Progress and Walt Whitman all the while maintaining that plucky cheery Edwardian foolhardiness that would run aground in the trenches of WWI. Cherry's teeth shattered from the cold, killing the nerves.

The retelling of Scott's trip to the Pole is equally gripping, and "horrific", also living up to the books title. In later years Cherry suffered from survivors guilt and wrote `Postscript to the Worst Journey in the World` (1948) in which he severely reproaches himself for not doing more to save Scott and the party. Cherry died in 1959.

EDITIONS: Only some editions contain this Postscript. The Penguin edition does not. Officially it was re-printed in the 1951 edition, and maybe in the 1994 Picador Travel Classics edition with an Introduction by Paul Theroux (Update: probably not. See comments to this review below). It should also be noted the 1951 edition was "corrected by the author" so it probably contains other changes - these changes I think might be reflected in the Picador edition (although not sure), but for sure not in the Penguin edition which is based on the 1922 text, as most are since it is now in the public domain.

Stark and stunning, November 17, 2009
Having enjoyed books on the subject of Shackleton's attempt at the South Pole, a friend suggested I check out this book concerning Scott's journey. The irony of these two stories is that Shackleton's trip (detailed very well in the book Endurance) was a failure in all regards except for the fact that he brought home every man in his group alive, whereas Scott's journey was successful at reaching the pole but then suffered multiple casualties.
The Worst Journey in the World is an amazing read, but very difficult at times. It's assumed that the reader knows a decent bit about polar expeditions as you are dumped into terminology and basic maneuvers with no explanation. I had very little knowledge of such things and found myself looking up words fairly often and rereading passages to understand what "hoosh" was or what the point of depoting supplies is. The result is that I learned a lot and eventually came to read this book on it's terms, which was highly enjoyable. However a quick crash course on polar exploration in the early 20th century wouldn't have been the worst idea before starting this read.
With all of that out of the way I have nothing left but praise. Making heavy use of the actual journals and diaries of the explorers this book gives the reader a delicious sense of immediacy. The title trip, for example, in which a three man team makes a journey in the dead of the antarctic winter to retrieve some penguin eggs for study, is one of the more gripping accounts I have ever read anywhere. Likewise, the final words and notes from Scott himself, recovered after his death, as he attempts to stumble and slog his way back from the pole during a freak blizzard are heartbreaking.
I highly recommend this book but am also compelled to give warning that it can get a bit technical at times and requires some outside knowledge for decent comprehension.

An unforgettable journey, July 11, 2009
The story of an unforgettable journey. This book has details of the journeys undertaken in 1910-1912 by the men of this polar expedition. Their courage and "never give up" attitude are a testament of the type of men they were. Reading the account of their adventures from the diaries of several different men gives a more complete perspective than the diary of one man could give. Definitely an exciting book. Leaves you in awe of what they achieved with no more than they had almost 100 years ago. They were true explorers.

Antarctic Thriller, June 10, 2009
An adventure story just doesn't get any better than this, and what adds to the readers pleasure is that it is all true. I was fortunate enough to read this while on an Antarctic cruise. The descriptions of Antarctica and the conditions faced by this expedition are terrific. This book is about character, endurance, hope, tragedy, and ultimately, wonder and awe !

Not As Good As I Hoped, May 10, 2010
I bought this with three other adventure books awhile back. This one was consistently ranked on the top of non-fiction adventure books.

There is no doubt that the Winter Journey that the author went on with 2 others is indeed the Worst Journey in the World. However, in my opinion, I had several issues with the book that I didn't expect based on all the great reviews:

1. I found much of it boring. Many pages are dedicated to the travel on the boat and observations of animals. I understand that this was pioneering scientific work, but not what I was expecting in a adventure book. Roughly half the book is not about adventure, but scientific observations.
2. I found much of it hard to read. This was either due to specific exploration terms or maybe British words that I am not familiar with, but I had a hard time following along. There were several trips made in preparation of the Polar Journey to establish camps for the trip to and from the pole. I didn't find the author clear on which ones were being established and why. I was left wondering what just happened and why.
3. The key aspects were clear: The Winter Journey (Worst Journey in the World), the Polar Journey, and the Search Journey. This was the best part of the book. As I mentioned, this was less than half the book. However, in this part, I found the writing to be poor. I guess it's because it is more of a compilation of journals, then it is a book written by an author. Sadly, I think many of the stories were far worse in reality than the author is capable of portraying due to a lack of being a skilled author.

In all, it was undoubtedly a true tale of two horrible journeys (Winter and Polar). My complaints are in the remaining 300+ pages. This is a scientific book that would prepare you if you were to make the same trip they did. It would be very beneficial in telling you what you should take and what mistakes they made. However, reading this book today, I am not interested in this. I was looking for an adventure book. 200 of the 560 pages mostly delivered on this.

So far, Into Thin Air, is my favorite non-fiction adventure book. It has the advantage of the first person's account being that of an author who knows how to descriptively tell what happened.

-77F with gale force winds..., January 4, 2010
This should not be one's first read of Antarctic journeys but is a 'must read' in the broader collective of work of explorations before modern technology and clothing, media hype, and corporate sponsorship. The book is extremely well-written in a journal style. I'm not sure that the tremendous effort of man-hauling sledges, crevasse crossings and rescues, and facing -77F and gale force winds is sufficiently descriptive. Scott perished but 11 miles from supplies of oil and food and that perhaps best notes him in Antarctic exploration. His somewhat obvious poor choices in the use of motor sledges(for hauling) and ponies (for hauling and food)are underplayed because of the journal style. The early descriptions of killer whales navigating and busting through sea ice in an attempt to eat them, their ponies, and their dogs is noteworthy. ... Read more

Editorial Review

What purrrfect timing! Fall 2010 marks the launch of the new PBS Kids television show The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!—an animated preschool science program based on the Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library book series—and to celebrate, we’re coating the cover of our new Learning Library book Ice Is Nice! with a shimmery finish! In this latest installment of the bestselling series, the Cat in the Hat takes Sally and Dick to visit the North and South Poles, where they mingle with native animals—reindeer, musk oxen, polar bears, caribou, and all sorts of penguins. They discover how the animals stay warm in the freezing cold, learn why it’s colder at the South Pole than at the North Pole, find out that one pole is located on land and the other isn’t, and learn that scientists are studying climate change to keep both poles icy cold.

This is the perfect book to curl up with on a cold winter’s day—made even more perfect with a glistening cover! ... Read more

Editorial Review

WHY IS THE arctic so cold? How do polar bears cross thin ice? How did people learn to survive in that harsh climate? Find out the answers to these questions and more in Magic Tree House Research Guide: Polar Bears and the Arctic, Jack and Annie's guide to the arctic. This is the nonfiction companion to Polar Bears past Bedtime. ... Read more

Reviews

Polar Bears are GRRRRRReat, October 18, 2007
This research guide was purchased for my classroom. In the first week I had it available, six students were on the waiting list to check it out. Once again Mr. and Mrs. Osborne have provided a teacher/student friendly support book for a Magic Tree House book.

Great book, but beware of an error..., March 25, 2009
On the 'Arctic Circle' map part of Russia (page 17) is mislabeled as 'Iceland'. On this map you can find Iceland on page 16, between Greenland and UK. I think that it is important for a research guide. I didn't mean to write the book review though... Great book!

IMPORTANT POLARbook TO HAVE!, December 7, 2007
IF YOU ARE IN LOVE WITH POLARbears or just LOVE ANIMALS LIKE WE DO THIS IS NOT A BOOK TO PASS UP! IT'S AFFORDABLE & PACKED WITH ALL YOU WOULD WANT EXCEPT FOR MORE COLOR PICTURES... THERE R NEVER ENOUGH FOR ANIMAL WARRIORS LIKE WE ARE! (IF U LEARN ABOUT THEM YOU'LL LOVE EM & IF YOU LOVE EM YOU'LL WANNA SAVE THEM!) RIP STEVE IRWIN... ... Read more

Editorial Review

Barry Lopez's National Book Award-winning classic study of the Far North is widely considered his masterpiece.

Lopez offers a thorough examination of this obscure world-its terrain, its wildlife, its history of Eskimo natives and intrepid explorers who have arrived on their icy shores. But what turns this marvelous work of natural history into a breathtaking study of profound originality is his unique meditation on how the landscape can shape our imagination, desires, and dreams. Its prose as hauntingly pure as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams is nothing less than an indelible classic of modern literature.
... Read more

Reviews

Desert Island book, April 27, 2004
Funny that a book about the Arctic would be on my "Desert Island" list, but this is one of the most effecting things I've read in my life. It's one thing to write a book about a region that explains it to the reader. It's quite another thing to write a book about a region that truly makes you feel as if you are there, that you understand it, that you "get it". The Eskimos have something like 25 words for snow. They can draw incredibly detailed maps of coastlines, from memory. On and on, the people and places are introduced to you, like visitors to your home, and you really begin to understand what it is to live in such a cold, beautiful place. The story of one Eskimo hunter will never leave me: he was hunting, and somehow became stranded on a broken off piece of ice. It floated away, with him on it, into the mist. All he had was his knife, made of bone. His friends searched for him, to no avail, and he was given up for dead. But he came back, years later, in a kayak he'd made, fully outfitted with warm clothes he'd also made, fat and happy and completely in tune with his environment, absolutely as at home there as the polar bear. He could make everything he needed, just from what this supposedly "barren" wasteland provided. That may not sound like much, but put yourself in his shoes (or mukluks) and you'll begin to feel the cold and the quiet close in around you.

That's what this book does for you. It puts you there.

The finest 'nature book' written, May 28, 1998
I've read a lot of nature writing--from Thoreau, Muir, Dillard etc. Lopez is the keenest observer and the most lyrical writer. (not to slight Muir, incidentally, but 19th century lyricism is hard for some to get used to...).

I've been a backcountry ranger for 28 years and, I like to think, have an appreciation for wilderness and observation of the natural world. Lopez is able to describe what I see.

Arctic dreaming in the Arizona desert., June 21, 2001
In the book that first got me hooked on his writing, Barry Lopez writes, "I looked out over the Bering Sea and brought my hands folded to the breast of my parka and bowed from the waist deeply toward the north, that great straight filled with life, the ice and water. I held the bow to the pale sulphur sky at the northern rim of the earth. I held the bow until my back ached, and my mind was emptied of its categories and designs, its plans and speculations. I bowed before the simple evidence of the moment in my life in a tangible place on the earth that was beautiful" (p. 414).

In THE POWER OF MYTH (1988), Joseph Campbell says that when we destroy nature and the revelations of nature, we destroy our own nature, too. "What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." This belief is the heartbeat of ARCTIC DREAMS. In his Preface, Lopez writes that "it is possible to live wisely on the land, and to live well. And in behaving respectfully toward all that the land contains, it is possible to imagine a stifling ignorance falling away from us" (p. xxviii). There are three themes at the center of his narrative: "the influence of the arctic landscape on the human imagination. How a desire to put a landscape to use shapes our evaluation of it. And, confronted by an unknown landscape, what happens to our sense of wealth. What does it mean to grow rich?" (p. 13).

Whether he is contemplating "the innocence" (p. 74) of muskoxen, the "intricate life of the polar bear" (p. 411), narwhals, migration, sea ice, or arctic light, Lopez has the ability to bring us to the edges of our senses. "This is an old business," he writes, "walking slowly over the land in anticipation of what lies hidden in it. The eye alights suddenly on something bright in the grass--the chitinous shell of an insect. The nose tugs at a minute blossom for some trace of arctic perfume. The hands turn over an odd bone, extrapolating, until the animal is discovered in the mind and seen to be moving in the land. One finds anomalous stones to puzzle over, and in footprints and broken spiderwebs the traces of irretrievable events" (p. 254). For Lopez, the Arctic region is "rich with metaphor, with adumbration. In a simple bow from the waist before the nest of the horned lark, you are able to stake your life, again, in what you dream" (p. xxix). He finds the "classic lines of a desert landscape" in the Arctic: "spare, balanced, extended, and quiet" (p. xxiii). This land is like poetry, Lopez observes: "it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life" (p. 274).

The Arctic region is a microcosm of the large-scale advance of Western culture, oil, gas and mineral industries upon the planet, "a disquieting reminder" that we are "on a course as disastrously short-lived as was that of the whaling industry" (p. 11). Lopez writes, "to contemplate what people are doing out here and ignore the universe of the seal, to consider human quest and plight and not know the land, to not listen to it, seemed fatal. Not perhaps for tomorrow, or next year, but fatal if you looked down the long road of our determined evolution" (p. 13). As this book proves, Barry Lopez is nature writng at its best.

G. Merritt

A Celebration Of The Arctic Landscape & Man's Dreams!, September 27, 2003
"Arctic Dreams" was recommended to me by a friend before I went on an Alaskan adventure a few years ago. This book expanded my vision of nature, and turned me on to the exquisite writing of Barry Lopez, who won the 1986 National Book Award for this classic work on the wild regions of the far north. "Arctic Dreams" is an extraordinary celebration of Arctic life and landscape which takes the reader on a journey to places rarely visited by man. Lopez' narrative does have a dreamlike quality, not only in its descriptions of nature at its most surreal, but in the absolute beauty of the writing itself. He does indeed capture the foreign reality of Arctic life, and death, with the loving care of an artist who places each brushstroke carefully on a canvas, bent on bringing the vision before him to others.

Mr. Lopez made a number of extended trips to Siberia, Greenland, and northern Canada, including Baffin Island, to observe the flora and fauna of the region - polar bears, killer whales, caribou, narwhals - as well as the spectacular Arctic landscape. He experienced eerie encounters with the aurora borealis, massive migrating icebergs, solar and lunar light, halos and coronas. And he experienced both the potential for catastrophic danger and the remarkable beauty that the Arctic land and sea offers. "Spring storms can sweep hundreds of thousands of helpless infant harp seals into the sea" - juxtaposed with, "A tiny flower blooms in a field of snow touched by the sun's benevolent light." Through Mr. Lopez' eyes the breathtaking experience of the Arctic landscape and the people who inhabit it become palpably real. I was particularly moved by his intimate and compassionate descriptions of the indigenous people of this region, who so aptly illustrate how mankind is capable of living in harmony with his surroundings. Lopez' prose and his conclusions make the strongest argument possible to work for the ecological health of our planet, for the sake of life itself, and for the health of our imagination and sense of wonder at the magnificent.

As mankind grows closer to conquering the earth's last frontiers, the issue of exploitation and encroachment becomes greater. For anyone who advocates preserving the few remaining wild areas on our planet, "Arctic Dreams" is a welcome gift and a source of motivation. It also provides an extraordinary read, and, perhaps, an awakening to those who have shown little interest in earth's most mysterious places.

This is a magical book that will enchant and awe the reader. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Bravo, Barry Lopez!
JANA

I wish someone could write about Australia like this!, October 1, 2002
Of all the books I've read on the artcic and antarctic, this stands out for its absolute precision of description. To see a landscape with Lopez' eyes, you would have to spend a lot of time looking, and absorbing what you saw, until you knew every inch of it with your eyes shut. So it's appropriate that when he describes things, the descriptions take time to write, they are precise, and thorough, and need to be read slowly. Any less would not convey the strangeness and unfamiliarity of the place. Lopez reminded me that many times, a day's aimless wandering about, just thinking about what you see, has as great a value as a day seeing the sights.
My edition has no photos, which is appropriate as the verbal description is superb. If you read this book, keep the internet handy, to use search engines to find photos of the places he and things he writes about. It's like having a limitless dictionary to hand, and with subject matter as unfamiliar as this, it helps tremendously. One could say that the book was 25 years ahead of its time.

Fine writing, February 28, 2004
An account of the American Arctic based on the author's own travels and a survey of the biology, ecology and history of the region. There is a tree-hugging, save-the-endangered-species,motif. (Don't get me wrong -I love trees and whales and things). He is rather solemn and philosophical with a lot of fine writing about the wonders of nature lifting us above the mundane. Sometimes he falls into the traps of fine writing, such as impressive long lists of plants, birds and animals, and misuse of words such as "mesic" and "adumbrate". It is a mine of information which I suppose is mostly accurate although I hadn't heard before that Walsingham was a duke or that Vitus Bering was a Dutchman.
I had mixed feelings aout his attiude towards the Eskimos. His account idealizes the nomadic hunting existence and it is sometimes unclear whether he is talking about present-day Inuit or drawing upon older accounts. He only once mentions alcohol as a problem and does not mention disputes with other native Americans, even when desribing Hearne's travels.
The description is largely limited to America and the bibliography has no Russian sources. He often uses Inuit words but his review of Arctic prehistory draws only on archeological evidence and is weak on linguistics and says nothing about the Chukchi language and Asian-American language links. DNA and blood groups are not mentioned.
I wouldn't make all those niggling criticisms about what got left out if the book did not set itself a high standard of comprehensiveness. It's virtually a one volume encyclopedia of the Arctic full of fascinating facts, vivid firsthand accounts, and splendid writing.
By the way, one arctic question's been bugging me since I was ten years old (the teacher didn't know the answer then and Lopez doesn't have it). What time is it at the North Pole?

Barry's Guidebook, June 3, 1998
This is not just a great book about the Artic, but a handbook for how to move through and observe wilderness and areas of unspoiled natural beauty. Lopez knows more about the interdependence of the human and natural worlds than any other writer I know.

Arctic as Desert, April 21, 2001
It's been some years ago now that I read Arctic Dreams. I found Lopez's writing powerful and gripping; I had to read more of his work and soon did. His use of the desert as a metaphor for the arctic brought to mind not only human desire to experience and transform landscapes, but also the sense of mystery that we attach to the environment--mystery that compels us to make known the unknown, whether through myth or exploration, and mystery that drives us to wax nostalgic when those landscapes are already comprehended and inexorably altered. Before the U.S. Civil War, some maps showed the Great Plains as the "Great American Desert." Within a decade, that land and its peoples had been transfigured in popular imaginations from a mythology of mystery to one of discovery and settlement. There is much to be gained from Lopez's deeply personal engagement with the Arctic and the ways his experience informs his elucidation of others' attempts, successful and not, to imagine, discover, conquer, and finally yield to this austere geography. In doing so, Lopez manages not to lose track of the sense of wonder and myth that nearly wells up from the landscape itself.

Arctic Dreams. Barry Lopez., March 26, 2007
Arctic Dreams is an extraordinary book, immediately a classic work of its genre, environmental nonfiction. Chapters focus on muskoxen, polar bears, narwhal, the migration of birds and of caribou, the otherworldly temporal states and unusual lighting and light-bending phenomenon of the northern polar regions, the mental and perceptual states of the northland's human residents and visitors, and the history of European and American/Canadian exploration, and exploitation, of the arctic. Lopez examines the artic with a careful and attentive eye, recognizing its subtleties and mysteries and not demanding that they be reduced to something that the reader will feel he has brought fully within his or her understanding. The writing is appropriate to the subject in view; alert, unhurried, and deliberate.

"One of our long-lived cultural differences with the Eskimo has been over whether to accept the land as it is or to exert the will to change it into something else. The great task of life for the traditional Eskimo is still to achieve congruence with a reality that is already given. The given reality, the real landscape, is 'horror within magnificence, absurdity within intelligibility, suffering within joy,' in the words of Albert Schweitzer. We do not esteem as highly these lessons in paradox. We hold in higher regard the land's tractability, its alterability. We believe the conditions of the earth can be changed to ensure human happiness, to provide jobs and to create material wealth and ease. Each culture, then, finds a different sort of apotheosis, of epiphany, and comfort in the land." (from the epilogue)

On page 406 of my 1986 edition, Lopez writes, "The European culture from which the ancestors of many of us came has yet to . . . understand the wisdom, preserved in North America, that lies in the richness and sanctity of a wild landscape, what it can mean in the unfolding of human life, the staying of a troubled human spirit." If there is a 'short list' of great environmental nonfiction, this book is on it.

Extensive account on wildlife too...., September 7, 2005
I especially liked his account of polar bears, harp seals and whales and their intermingling relationships. His description of how he perceived his surroundings made me feel as if I was there! In fact, it made me book a 10-day trip to Alaska in order to escape the stresses of city-living for a while! I was somewhat surprised by the chapter on Eskimos and a thorough discussion of their origin since I had expected this book to be a travelogue at best. Of course, it is much more. The chapter on Ice and Light, for instance, is outstanding and has probably the best description I have read on the Northern Lights (or Aurora Borealis)!!! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Discover Antarctica

Feel the salty kiss of sea mist when nearby whales exhale their startlingly loud 'ffffffffffffffffff' next to your boat
Sneak a peak a the secret harbor of Deception Island, where you can sail inside a restless volcano
Pay homage to intrepid explorers at their base camps, where objects remain eerily preserved a century later

In This Guide

Five authors, 30 specialists, a supporting cast of thousands of emperor penguins
Expanded coverage of environmental issues, climate change and ways travelers can make a difference
Complete pre-trip planning information for visits by air, private yacht, cruise ship or resupply vessel
Content updated daily - visit lonelyplanet.com
... Read more

Reviews

The next best thing to being in Antarctica, September 19, 2000
Lonely Planet have been setting the standards for travel guide-books for a number of years now.

Jeff Rubin's guide-book to Antarctica is a treasure, first of all because guide-books on Antarctica are still very rare indeed, secondly because it is exhaustively comprehensive in its detail and yet so readable.

Antarctica is a unique place. The last true wilderness remaining on earth. A land where diverse and warring nations co-exist together to work, study and explore in peace. A land where Man can watch Mother Nature act alone, undisturbed. The highest, windiest, driest continent and yet the one containing the most water. Jeff Rubin gives profound insights on this last continent, this last true frontier. This book is packed with facts about history, geology as well as environmental issues (by Dr.Maj de Porteer) and antarctic science (by Dr.David Walton).

This book also contains a wildlife guide with more than sixty entries packed with pictures and with information essential for those who want to go and observe the wilderness of Antarctica.

Practical tips on when, how and with whom to go is both up to date, independent and as complete as one can get.

Plenty of information on the main Antarctic gateways is also provided as well as my most treasured part of the book - the chapter on the Sub-Antarctic Islands packed with information which is very diffuclt to find anywhere else with details on such isolated islands like Bouvetoya - the most isolated land on earth, Ile Crozet, Ile Kerguelen and many many others.

There are more than 20 maps in this book including, believe it or not, a map of non-existent islands. Throughout his book Rubin adds boxed text which provide to-the-point information on varied subjects ranging from Helicopter Safety, Taking Photos in Antarctica, Why one should not collect anything from Antarctica, Glaciology, the Aurora Australis and How to cope with isolation.

It is a pity that Rubin does not deal with such sensitive issues such as the exploration of the undergroung lake Vostok and attempts by many groups to ban sampling from this lake so as to avoid contamination.

A selection of photos is also present in this book, although unfortuantely not even one new photo has been added when compared to the first edition.

This book is a must for all those who are going to Antarctica as well for all those are interested in Antarctica but who do not have the good fortune, or the necessary finances to go to the most beautiful place on earth in person. Instead through Jeff Rubin one can practice on a regular basis armchair tourism. The only pity is that here in Malta the temperature is 35 degress Celsius. To feel truly there, I need a 2 metre tall freezer so as to at least feel what is it like to be in a very hot Antarctican summer day!

A truly great achievement up to LP standards, and even more, January 11, 2002
This book from Lonely Planet is, as always, the ultimate choice of guidebook for travelers. It provides excellent and up-to-date information which any type of traveler will find invaluable. Despite the fact that Antarctica is probably the least visited of the many regions of the world covered by LP, the authors have managed to put together an outstanding agglomeration of data and advice, well edited and excellently written. But... furthermore, on top of being an excellent travel book, this LP guide is also (like many other LP guides, but even more outstandingly) a great book about Antarctica's reality: the place itself, the peculiar or unique characters of this wonderful land, etc. Truly wonderful material is provided in this book, ensuring excellent reading for the armchair traveler, or the Antarctica beginner alike. Its many chapters and additional text boxes about a variety of topics, contain and provide extremely rich information on matters from history to politics, from geography to biology. All in all, a masterpiece.

Absolutely best and most complete travel guide to The Ice., December 21, 1998
If you plan a trip to The Ice, you will find this book invaluable. If you do not, you will find it fascinating, and it will make you want to go. In addition to all manner of practical advice for travelers, it is packed with thorough and interesting history of the continent, its wildlife, its geography, and also contains tempting suggestions for further non-fiction and fiction reading, films and videos, and even CD's. It is written with grace and humor, and contains really useful maps and charts. (How about that map of "Non-Existent Islands"!) Highest recommendation.

great backgrounder, July 2, 2005
If you're one of the few actually going to Antarctica, this book will give you an excellent background on the White Continent. It's not necessarily the best for planning a trip -- you'll get more up-to-date cruise ship info. online. But Lonely Planet will tell you all about the different possible landing spots, which can help you choose which tour to take. There's also good details about the most common embarkation points for Antarctica cruises. This book was handy when my husband & I planned our trip to the peninsula, which we chronicle in our DVD "T&T's Real Travels in Antarctica" (also available on amazon.com).

Little guidance for the prospective traveler, September 7, 2010
This book, while relatively well written with a good survey of the exploration history of the continent and much detail on the many parts of Antarctica where virtually no one goes, is almost totally useless as a travel guide.

The single, by far most important decision that a prospective traveler makes is to choose the type of ship and, within the type, which individual ship. According to IAATO there were some 38,000 visitors to Antarctica during the 2009/2010 season. Almost exactly half were passengers on large standard cruise ships that the big operators reposition to the Valparaiso (Chile) to Buenos Aires route during the Northern Hemisphere winter. As a little "bonus extra" these ships skirt Antarctica as they round the Horn and let their passengers view the continent between trips to the groaning buffet tables. Ships of more than 1000 passengers make no landings, while ships with between 400 and 1000 do sometime make a single landing of groups of 100 or less. The same is the case for ships of between 100 and 400 passengers which may venture to make a couple of landings.

The other half, some 19,000, opt for one of the "expedition travel" choices. The vast majority of these book a cruise on one of the roughly 20 ice strengthened ships that are able to navigate in Antarctic waters and, since they carry less than 100 passengers, can land passengers on the continent. As Mr. Rubin points out in the book, 80% of these travelers visit 30 different spots on the Antarctic Peninsula and half of these visit just 10 of the sites, and finally 30% visit only 5.

Therefore, while the 19 pages on the Antarctic Peninsula are useful, I question what value the other 200 pages on East Antarctica, Ross Sea, Weddell Sea, pre-Antarctic Islands and even South Georgia, the Falklands etc are since no more than a handful of tourists visit these locations.

But the real failure is that there is almost no information that could help prospective visitors choose with whom they will travel. There are obviously vast differences between the big cruise ships and the expedition ones. For the purpose of this discussion let's put aside passengers on the big cruise ships; they are at best accidental visitors to Antarctica. But there are also huge differences between the expedition ships. About half are Russian research vessels that are chartered out to large tour operators for the season. They are technically good ships but accommodations are often Spartan and onboard service frequently spotty. At the other end of the spectrum are the Lindblad ships and the Hapag-Lloyd ones which are super luxury and with price tags in accordance.

Then there are several ships in between, including the only two locally owned ships, the Chilean Antarctic Dream ( [...] ) and the Argentine Ushuaia ([...] ). Both offer typical cuisine of the two countries with notable examples of both countries wines. The Antarctic Dream is a bit more upscale while the Ushuaia is somewhat more for the backpacker set.

In short what this guide book lacks is guidance on the most important decision that an Antarctic traveler will make; how to get there.

Best Guide You Can Buy, April 11, 2007
I am involved with a Canadian research group that takes high school students to Antarctica for research and study. The Lonely Planet Guide to Antarctica was sent to us by the group to use as a primary source for learning about and preparing for the trip.

My daughter and I both utilized a copy of the book for advanced planning prior to her depature. She took a copy with her and I had a copy with me. I read the majority of the book while she was preparing and continued to consult the book while she traveled. I found it to have an amazing amount of information and I really could not find anything missing from the book that I thought I needed. In addition, my daughter found it incredibly useful as the ship she was aboard traveled from site to site. She could research the next stop at night, and be totally prepared for arrival by morning.

If you are planning to get only one guide book for a trip to Antarctica, I would recommend this book highly. Small enough to take with you in your carry on, yet large enough to be able to answer almost any question you can imagine!

Surprisingly good guide from Lonely Planet, May 14, 2009
I usually associate Lonely Planet guides with backpackers and big cities. However, Lonely Planet did a great job with this tour guide for Antarctica. I used it this past winter during my cruise to Antarctica. It provides very useful background on the key sites and maps on the continent. It covers the history of exploration and international treaties covering the continent. It also has a decent section on Antarctic wildlife (although I would still recommend a dedicated book on the wildlife). More importantly, the book suggests the best sites for pictures and wildlife-viewing. While Lonely Planet isn't a replacement for a book on Antarctic wildlife, this book will help you take advantage of everything the "white continent" has to offer.

Should be considered an essential guide for anyone traveling to or through the region of the Antarctica, February 8, 2009
While visiting the Antarctic Circle isn't in most people's plans when they think of traveling the globe, there is a great deal to interest both the causal visitor, the scientist, and the commercial traveler. That's where Jeff Rubin's compact, 380-page travel guide compendium of facts, maps, advice, and descriptive commentary comes in. A wealth of essential background information that includes how to start planning for a trip to antarctica, itineraries, history, expeditions, culture, environment, wildlife, as well as antarctic science are all relevant issues, and provided with solid information for the curious reader. The remaining chapters of Jeff Rubin's "Antarctica" guide book is organized regionally beginning with the Southern Ocean; and continuing with South Georgia, Shag Rocks & South Orkney Islands; Falkland Islands/Isles Malvinas; South Shetland Islands; Other Peri-Antarctic Islands; Antarctic Peninsula & Weddell Sea; Ross Sea; East Antarctica; and the South Pole. Enhanced with the inclusion of a directory, the Antarctic Treaty, a section on Transportation and another on Health, a glossary, an Index, the World Time Zones, and more, Jeff Rubin's "Antarctica" should be considered an essential guide for anyone traveling to or through the region of the Antarctica.

Yep, this is what you should get., December 21, 2008
Just got back from Antarctica. You don't have much choice on guidebooks, but I felt this was really good. I read another one also. Several of my fellow travellers agreed. One person (and there is always one) thought it did not give you enough beyond the obvious information. Most of us felt we needed to know the obvious.

Best travel guide for Antarctica, February 7, 2008
Not only is this the best travel guide for Antarctica on the market, but it is incredibly fun to read! Much more than a travel guide, this book teaches you about the history and culture of Antarctica and its surrounding islands. As might be expected, wildlife also comprises a significant portion of the book.

A few shortcomings:
I wish that more detail would have been given to the sub-Antarctic islands. Wikipedia covers these in more detail than the book, and that is disappointing. I also expected more maps, particularly in the islands component. I would have also liked to see more color pictures and would have gladly paid extra for them - LP should realize that most purchasers of this book are not going to be able to go to Antarctica anytime soon and so we are experiencing it through these images.

Again, outstanding book - be sure to pick up the Falkland Islands LP guide if you like this one! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Hundreds of hardy people have tried to carve a living in the Alaskan bush, but few have succeeded as consistently as Heimo Korth. Originally from Wisconsin, Heimo traveled to the Arctic wilderness in his feverous twenties. Now, more than three decades later, Heimo lives with his wife and two daughters approximately 200 miles from civilization -- a sustainable, nomadic life bounded by the migrating caribou, the dangers of swollen rivers, and by the very exigencies of daily existence.

In The Final Frontiersman, Heimo's cousin James Campbell chronicles the Korth family's amazing experience, their adventures, and the tragedy that continues to shape their lives. With a deft voice and in spectacular, at times unimaginable detail, Campbell invites us into Heimo's heartland and home. The Korths wait patiently for a small plane to deliver their provisions, listen to distant chatter on the radio, and go sledding at 44° below zero -- all the while cultivating their hard-learned survival skills that stand between them and a terrible fate.

Awe-inspiring and memorable, The Final Frontiersman reads like a rustic version of the American Dream and reveals for the first time a life undreamed by most of us: amid encroaching environmental pressures, apart from the herd, and alone in a stunning wilderness that for now, at least, remains the final frontier. ... Read more

Reviews

Little House in the Big Arctic, July 16, 2004
James Campbell reports the life of Heimo Korth and the family he has raised, the last family of trappers to remain in the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Although this book has one foot in the "wilderness adventure can you believe anyone can survive this" genre (Heimo regularly traps in -50 weather and even jogs in -20 weather), it is also a kind of domestic family saga, almost a "Little House on the Prairie" but the prairie is the Arctic.

Heimo, his wife Edna, and daughters Rhonda and Krin, face near tragedies and real tragedies lost in blizzards, or facing a broken-down snow machine miles from home, or jumping from ice flow to ice flow in desparate hope of making it back to shore, or falling through overflow ice on the river. Remarkably though, the main thing I'll remember about this book is the sense it conveys of Heimo's redemption (lost and alcoholic, he came to Alaska to trap in the 70s, but dried up and built a family there), and of the love and affection of a family who have no one but each other for months on end. This is a real testament to Campbell's skill as a journalist and author.

The adventure and drama of the Arctic keep the reader turning pages like a good mystery but the after-effect is one of love and integrity.

A fascinating look at an impossibly alien lifestyle, April 17, 2005
Heimo Korth has lived in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for nearly thirty years, eking out a subsistence living some 250 miles from the nearest road. He moved to Alaska at twenty, eager to escape an abusive father and unwilling to submit to the yoke of a nine-to-five job. For six years Heimo ("HI-mow") lived alone, trapping and hunting and flying out occasionally with bush pilots to sell his furs. But in 1982 Heimo married Edna, whom he met while walrus hunting on St. Lawrence Island, and she followed her husband to the wilderness. They have lived together since in this desolate place where the sun dips below the horizon in November and isn't seen again until January, where temperatures range from a balmy 80 degrees to 50 below. They and their daughters live a semi-nomadic life, moving each spring from one of their three cabins to another so as not to deplete the animal populations in any one area. Every summer they spend six weeks in Fort Yukon, population 750, stocking up on supplies and getting a small taste of civilization.

James Campbell, who happens to be Heimo's cousin, visited the Korths several times beginning in 2002. In telling Heimo's story Campbell juxtaposes descriptions of life in the Arctic--the logistics of carving up a dead moose, the efficient reuse of toilet paper as a firestarter--with stories of Heimo's boyhood in Wisconsin and discussion of the politics of land apportionment in Alaska. The result is a fascinating look at a lifestyle that is impossibly alien yet unexpectedly familiar: Heimo's teenagers tack Britney Spears posters to the walls of their cabin.

One begins reading Campbell's account with incredulity, wondering why anyone would choose to live in such an extreme environment and whether the Korths were wise to raise their children there. But reading the fascinating, sometimes heartrending story of Heimo and Edna's life one comes to respect them and their decisions. We are left hoping that Heimo manages to live out his days as he wishes, growing old in a wilderness few men before him have experienced.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

A Must Read!, August 16, 2004
This book is so wonderfully written. James Campbell breathes so much life in every word and every paragraph, that it is one of those rare books that is hard to put down. My husband couldn't believe that I would be so taken in by a story about the wilderness.

Yet, the character development; the smooth writing style that describes the trials and hardships; all of the history that I learned made this such a three dimensional and rare treat. If only James Campbell had other books that I could purchase!

I read a ton of books and this is one of the few that I will definitely recommend to everyone that I know.

Welcome To The World Of 40 Below, June 18, 2004
What would you do if it were 40 below and your snowmobile conked out 15 miles from your cabin?

After reading this book you will understand that the answer is simple. You'd die. End of story.

This is the tale of a real world tough guy who at a young age gave himself over to the pursuit of wilderness survival and is about the only one left out there with survival skills of this level.

The author is no wimp either, spending considerable time with Mr. Korth plus doing mega-research on the history of the Alaskan wilderness, which he weaves into the story in an informing, non-boring way.

When I read Into The Wild I somehow thought that the fellow that died just had a few unlucky breaks-like the river rising which trapped him out in that old bus. Wrong. That guy never stood a chance from day one, and this book shows you why.

Like a lot of guys I have always had two fantasies - living in the backwoods of Alaska or living on a remote tropical island. I heartily thank the author for paring my fantasy list down to one - the island.

not girly but you'll love it, June 1, 2004
This isn't really my genre but when i started reading this story I couldn't put it down. It is incredibly inspiring and touching. It will touch your life and influence you in a positive way: a little like the book, Seabiscuit. It was educational too. It would be wonderful for children in difficult financial or familial situations to read. I can't stop talking about it and I can't put it down.

Extreme Camping, May 31, 2004
For those of you who enjoy the outdoors, this is a well-written story about what may be the last pure subsistence family in North America. Ten thousand years ago we were all this way; now we are down to one man, his wife, and two daughters living in the remote bush of Alaska, eating mostly meat and surviving in a shack too small for most lawn tractors in the lower 48. While this may sound grim, it is usually not. It isn't paranoia but rather a pioneering spirit and awe for the natural world that compels this lifestyle (if "lifestyle" doesn't overly trivialize three decades in the bush living mostly on wild game and facing environmental extremes usually associated with other planets). The author is a good writer, the subjects of the story remarkable and sympathetic, and the pace of the narrative usually brisk. Definitely worth reading.

Great Adventure!, September 24, 2004
I'm amazed with people who can forgo safety and creature comforts to set out to explore the world. Since I'm too timid for such things myself, I love to read about people who aren't. James Campbell's book was a great and easy read. I fell in love with Heimo Korth and his family and ended up envying their beautiful, simple and dangerous life.

If you ever wanted to live in the Alaskan bush..., October 31, 2004
Thank you James Campbell for your persistence in bringing the story of Heimo Korth and family to the world. Very few of us will ever experience the Alaskan wilderness beyond the tether of a cruise ship or the reach of a town. However, only in The Final Frontiersman have I been able to sense the tremendous strength of will and character it takes for someone to live, really live, longtime in the Alaska bush.

If you want to look over the shoulder of someone who has created a life in one of the most challenging environments in the world, then this is a must read for you.

Fantastic Voyage!, July 23, 2004
Whether you are an armchair traveler or an active trekker, James Cambell's book The Final Frontiersman is a must read.

The author is a journalist who can really write, and he takes the reader to where few people will ever travel, and guides us where he really did travel to visit the trapper Heimo Korth and his family in a world that is more awe inspiring, life threatening, and wonderous than any that has been chronicled in modern times.

Wear warm socks when you read this!

Excellent, unsentimental tale of subsistence in Alaska, June 16, 2004

Comparisons will be drawn between this book and Krakauer's excellent Into the Wild based on the common themes of living off the land and the unforgivingness of the Alaskan wilderness. Where Krakauer's book is a meditation on the romanticism and perils of self-reliance, The Final Frontiersman is an unsentimental and penetrating look at the physical, emotional and psychological challenges of making a living in this remote and and unforgiving environment.


Heimo Korth, his wife and two daughters and the life they lead are fascinating. Campbell's well-constructed narrative makes exciting and evocative reading.


If Chris McCandless, the subject of Krakauer's book, had had the chance to read this book, he might still be alive today. ... Read more

Editorial Review

In 1912, six months after Robert Falcon Scott and four of his men came to grief in Antarctica, a thirty-two-year-old Russian navigator named Valerian Albanov embarked on an expedition that would prove even more disastrous. In search of new Arctic hunting grounds, Albanov's ship, the Saint Anna, was frozen fast in the pack ice of the treacherous Kara Sea-a misfortune grievously compounded by an incompetent commander, the absence of crucial nautical charts, insufficient fuel, and inadequate provisions that left the crew weak and debilitated by scurvy.

For nearly a year and a half, the twenty-five men and one woman aboard the Saint Anna endured terrible hardships and danger as the icebound ship drifted helplessly north. Convinced that the Saint Anna would never free herself from the ice, Albanov and thirteen crewmen left the ship in January 1914, hauling makeshift sledges and kayaks behind them across the frozen sea, hoping to reach the distant coast of Franz Josef Land. With only a shockingly inaccurate map to guide him, Albanov led his men on a 235-mile journey of continuous peril, enduring blizzards, disintegrating ice floes, attacks by polar bears and walrus, starvation, sickness, snowblindness, and mutiny. That any of the team survived is a wonder. That Albanov kept a diary of his ninety-day ordeal-a story that Jon Krakauer calls an "astounding, utterly compelling book," and David Roberts calls "as lean and taut as a good thriller"-is nearly miraculous.

First published in Russia in 1917, Albanov's narrative is here translated intoEnglish for the first time. Haunting, suspenseful, and told with gripping detail, In the Land of White Death can now rightfully take its place among the classic writings of Nansen, Scott, Cherry-Garrard, and Shackleton.
... Read more

Reviews

A quick read, good addition to that polar expedition library, October 31, 2000
This is a worthwhile read if you enjoy harrowing stories of near-death polar adventures. It's amazing that Albanov survived. His book is a combination of excerpts from his detailed diary and elaborations he added after the fact, supplemented by an informational preface from the publisher who recently discovered his almost-forgotten manuscript.

If you have already read "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" by Alfred Lansing, this book isn't quite as good, but it is an interesting contrast. (If you haven't, put Endurance on your must-read list!) The challenges faced were similar, though not quite as extended in Albanov's case.

This story starts in much the same way as the Endurance - a ship trapped in pack ice (though in this case in the Arctic). But this is where the story diverges. The biggest difference that you learn up-front is that only two people survived (compared to the whole crew on the Endurance!)

Albanov is the navigator but does not get along with the captain. As a result, after two winters (!) enduring their relationship and the worsening conditions, he asks for permission to build a kayak and sledge from scrap and set out on his own in search of land. Much to his disappointment, however, half the crew (even many of the weaker ones) ask to accompany him.

Their destination is "Cape Flora" about 120 miles away across pack ice. According to a polar explorer's diary from decades ago, Cape Flora once had a shelter and supplies. But they really don't even know if it still exists and exactly how to get there. And if it is still there - what then? But Albanov is able to focus on the immediate goal and not worry about the what if's.

Interestingly, the crew was not a group of explorers anticipating adventure, but opportunists looking to make money in the walrus-hunting trade. This could have contributed to their low survival rate. Albanov complains about his companions a lot - their laziness, stupidity. But from Albanov's first hand account, the reader can infer that he was a loner. I couldn't help but wonder whether a leader like Shackleton could have brought out the best in the group and had a higher chance of surviving.

Anyway, it is truly amazing that Albanov and one of his companions survive all the crazy challenges they are delt - snowblidness, hunger, cold, scurvy, lack of maps, drifting pack ice, angry walruses, almost drowning, and so on.

This is a short book, and a good page-turner. Although it's not as good as Endurance, it's still a good read.

Exciting man vs. nature thriller, November 1, 2000
Perfect for fans of INTO THIN AIR, KNOCKDOWN, or similar titles that set humans against pitiless nature--and here nature does some serious damage against the humans. Albanov clearly conveys the confusion and bouts of hopelessness that made his life-or-death trip across uncharted ice such a challenge. Albanov's details about using home-made sledges and kayaks to travel over the cracked ice, his small group's constant search for food, and the difficulties in keeping a group constantly moving toward an unseen goal make this a mesmerizing tale. Readers of Jack London will find this adventure a treat, too.

Great Russian Entry in Polar Literature, December 5, 2000
First, I would like to thank Jon Krakauer and David Roberts for their efforts in bringing this lost treasure to English-speaking readers.

Much of what is read about polar exploration is about American, or English, or Scandinavian exploits. The Russian Classic, In the Land of White Death (the title is the English translation of the title of the French version published in 1928), will make a great addition to any library on Arctic and Antarctic exploration.

Valerian Albanov is the Navigator on the Saint Anna which leaves Alexandrivsk (now Murmansk) in 1912 to traverse the Northeast Passage (something only accomplished once before at the time) on a hunting trip that was supposed to end in Valdivostok. But, a late start finds the Saint Anna frozen in the ice pack early that winter in the Kara Sea. After wintering 1913 stuck in the ice that is dragging them every northward, Albanov believes that the best chance of survival is for the crew to split in two - half to remain on the Saint Anna with her captain Greogiy Brusilov and wait the eventual (hopeful) passage of the ship into the Western Hemisphere to be freed near Greenland, while the other half - thirteen - follows Albanov on a trek across the ice pack southward towards Franz Josef Land, the archiplelago that was Fridtjof Nansen's Farthest North.

Albanov's account begins with his team's departure from the Saint Anna. The early part of the book is told in a narrative that Albanov wrote after the trek then quickly switches to his journal entries which are written with great clarity. Albanov's adventure brings them face-to-face with the harshest of dangers including being separated from the rest of his team on ice flows, constant attacks by Walruses (not always unprovoked), and treking with poorly made sledges that were built from scrap materials removed from the Saint Anna.

Albanov's writing style brings the reader into the adventure and when they trek for 15 hours southward some days only to find that the ice flow has taken them farther north than when they started, you feel their anguish.

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A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

No stopping to smell the flowers on this hike, January 17, 2001
Navigating the Barents Sea north of Russia and Siberia can be a dodgy proposition. Nevertheless, in August 1912 the Russian ship "Saint Anna", with 25 men and one female nurse aboard, set sail from Murmansk for Vladivostok (7,000 miles distant via the Northeast Passage), with the expressed purpose of discovering new Arctic hunting grounds. By mid-October, the vessel was trapped in the ice, and, for the next 18 months, drifted helplessly northwards. In April of 1914, ten of the crew and the ship's navigator, Valerian Albanov, despairing of the vessel's eventual release, voluntarily left their shipmates in an attempt, with kayaks and sledges, to reach the Franz Josef island group somewhere to their south. IN THE LAND OF WHITE DEATH, subsequently written by Albanov, is based on his diary of the 3-month, 235-mile odyssey over the ice pack, frigid water and deserted island shores to reach Cape Flora on Northbrook Island, from which point he anticipated rescue.

There are many points of similarity between this book and ENDURANCE: SHACKLETON'S INCREDIBLE VOYAGE, by Alfred Lansing, which describes the same sort of gritty survival journey achieved by Sir Ernest Shackleton and his 27 men after their ship, "Endurance" was trapped and crushed by Antarctic ice in 1915 during an abortive attempt to reach the South Pole. Notwithstanding the facts that Shackleton was a more charismatic leader, that Shackleton's men were of better mettle, and that their journey to safety was over a longer distance, the Albanov narrative remains a gripping, tautly told account of men against the elements. One of its chief attractions, for those with short attention spans or too many books to read, is its brevity --190 pages in small-format hardcover. Sadly, there is no photo section (as is included in ENDURANCE).

One might wonder why this tale took so long to be noticed by the reading public as opposed to various accounts of the Shackleton ordeal. Perhaps it's because it first had to be translated from Russian, or because Albanov, unlike Shackleton, died in obscurity, or because Shackleton was already a figure of some fame by 1915. Or because all of the Endurance's crew came back alive, while the Saint Anna's crew, well ... In any case, WHITE DEATH is a little gem of a book, and I unreservedly recommend it.

Facinating account of artic survival, June 25, 2001
Albanov was a Russian navigator. In 1912 he set sail as second in command of the Saint Anna in the hopes of reaching Vladivostok across the Northeast Passage. His ship was locked in the pack ice in the Kara Sea and drifting northward. After 18 months locked in the ice, with supplies incapable of supporting everyone another winter, he asked for permission to build a kayak and sled to seek land to the south. Others decided to join him, encouraged by the Captain, who with the small remainder of the crew, hope to be spit out of the ice in the Atlantic many months later. They were never found.

Thirteen started the perilous journey and two survived. The remainder on the Saint Anna are perhaps still locked in an icy death above the artic circle.

The book was written in Russian and later translated to French. Only recently was in translated into English after a copy was found in the Harvard library, unread for 68 years.

Albanov's diary, the basis for this later book, describes the ordeal, the wildlife encountered, the snow blindness, and the fatigue that lead to the deaths of many of the men.

I found the book to be a quick read. I was unable to put it down until I finished it.

Strongly recommended.

Conrad B Senior

A book that defines vividly the words - courage and tenacity, September 22, 2001
Ninety years after the daring hostile and torrid trek of desperation, this `tour de force' of arctic literature was found hidden away in the library of a major university. Now, made available in English for the first time, this is a gripping story of Russian navigator Valerian Albanov. A man among men who establishes, or at least reinforces, the definition for the words: courageous, tenacious and dedicated.

Albanov's story does not read like the personal diary that it is; rather `Land of White Death' is the gripping compelling writing of a journey through a world that so foreign and hostile that it vaporizes hope of the most valiant men replacing hope with the despairing darkness of the frigid arctic nights.

He and a group of ill prepared and poorly equipped men left the warmth and perceived safety of their stranded ship to journey without a map into the frozen arctic. Only two emerged 3 months later. This is their tale. Strongly Recommended

Exciting true life adventure, October 3, 2004
I've always been fascinated about Arctic & Antartic exploration, and try to read any books about it that I can find. This first-person work by a Russian officer on an ill-fated Arctic journey from 1912 to 1914 is certainly a very exciting one, even though the author tends to be laconic at times about his exploits. He tells the story of his ship becoming icelocked, and then of his trek, with several other companions, across the trackless wastes of the Arctic to look for a safe haven on distant land. It's quite compelling, and makes for very gripping reading. The paperback edition of this work contains additional material gleaned from the diary of one of the author's companions on this treacherous journey, and it sheds some additional light on what happened, and especially on the mysterious two men who abandoned the party during the trip, and left them in a very precarious position. It's a book well worth reading for anyone interested in the Arctic, or indeed for anyone who can admire the lengths to which the human spirit and body will push itself in order to survive under the most exteme of conditions.

A true account of survival in the Siberian Arctic, March 11, 2004
The Russian exploration vessel, the Saint Anna, set sail in 1912 to search for hunting grounds in the North Polar region. Within a few months, the crew of 33 had become icebound and spent the next year and a half trapped in the ice, drifting farther and farther North. In 1914, the navigator, Valerian Albanov, decided to risk a trek across the ice with the hope of reaching Franz Josef Land. 13 crewmen set off across the ice, with the remaining 20 choosing to stay on board the ship. Of the 13 crewmen, only two survived.

"In the Land of White Death" is the true account of the trek, as written by Valerian Albanov. Starting with the few days before leaving, he writes a remarkable story of survival in severely cold conditions, with supplies diminishing and morale quickly ebbing. It is very detailed with its discriptions not only of the terrain, but of the crew and their physical and mental states throughout the journey.

Translator David Roberts also includes in his epilogue some of the text from the other survivor of the journey, crewman Alexander Konrad. His take on certain events sheds a whole new lights on certain aspects of their voyage across the ice.

This is a remarkable book, both for its story of survival and its glimpse into human nature. One of the best non-fiction books that I've read.

A riveting account of tragedy, perseverance and courage..., May 23, 2001
Albanov's recounting of his perilous journey across the barren ice fields of the Arctic Ocean is riveting. After his ship is hopelessly locked in Arctic ice for nearly 18 months, he decides to strike out for land - whatever the consequenses... The adventure, drama, and real-life dangers Albanov and his team encounter make for truly compelling reading. Albanov's struggles above the 80th parallel put our daily routines into perspective... I recommend White Death highly - it is well written, concise, and above all, a true story. This book does live up to its billing as a great addition to the literature and lore of Arctic exploration...

In the Land of White Death, February 21, 2001
This pearl of a book, so eloquently written, is exactly what makes non-fiction adventure so compelling. You simply cannot believe what you are reading or that the human spirit can overcome such despair. Is it possible to relate to this incredible story in an age where we complain of parking too far from the mall entrance on a cold day? The synopsis is recounted in every review but the essence is captured when Albanov nearly drowns in the icy stormy sea. When most men lose the will to fight death, Albanov resists with every ounce in his body. "Who will ever know how we died? No one! The idea that no one would ever know how we fought against these indomitable elements, and that our end would remain a mystery forever, was an unspeakable torture to me." The irony is that the Russian and translated French diary itself was almost lost in obscurity. The size of this little treasure, which easily fits in the palm of your hand, certainly belies the strength of the story within. It is highly recommended. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Continuing the aerial photography that gave such visual command to his previous National Geographic titles, Through the Eyes of the Gods: An Aerial Vision of Africa and Through the Eyes of the Condor: An Aerial Vision of Latin America, Haas now trains his lenses on the regions that transect the Arctic Circle. His latest project yields stunning images that show not a "blinding storm of white" as one might think—but rather, a dramatic and surprising diversity of brilliant colors and unexpected subjects. Photographing over a three-year period, Haas captured imagery that reflects three key elements of the region: the arctic landforms, the iconic wildlife, and the footprint of man. This book strives for and succeeds in producing a visual record that will reshape our ideas of what the Arctic has to offer and why we should protect it. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Considered by many to be the "Grande Dame of the American Conservation Movement, " Murie recounts how she grew to understand, respect and love the Alaskan frontier during the early 20th century. From plagues of mosquitoes to the movement of caribou, Murie explores the many aspects of nature in Alaska. 32 illustrations. ... Read more

Reviews

Alaska by an Alaskan, July 15, 2004
Many of the best-known books about Alaska, its people and wilderness, have been written from an outsider's perspective (John McPhee, for example, or Joe McGinniss), with an outsider's sense of detachment and strangeness, as though what they were commenting on were just slightly odd on some level.

Margaret Murie (known as "Mardy"), gives as Alaska from a true insider's perspective, as one who grew up with it, knows it in her bones, and loves it the way we love our closest family.

Born in 1902, Mardy moved to Fairbanks at age 9, where kids went to school in -50F temperatures and where the only way in or out of Alaska in winter was on the back of a mail sled propelled by sled dogs. One of the first grads of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, she married the naturalist Olaus Murie and honeymooned in the Arctic. Over the years, fearless Mardy even took her infant children on expeditions into the wild.

The book is an indivisible combination of autobiography and nature writing. Murie has a remarkable eye; her descriptive powers rival McPhee's but her tone is more one of powerful affection rather than awe. My favorite story was of a young teenage Mardy, on her way to the Lower 48 to go to high school, catching the last mail sled out of town in the spring of 1918. This spring trip took many days; at each river crossing there was a possibility of not making it over the thinning ice.

What an adventure! Combined with that adventure is a powerful romance, the lifelong relationship between Olaus, a professional naturalist; Mardy, the fearless and intrepid companion; and Alaska herself.

Mardy Murie died only last year, at age 101. If you read this book, you will regret having just missed her; she deserves to be missed.

"And I see them dancing.....", November 13, 2000
I, first, heard of Mardy Murie and her husband, Olaus, while watching John Denver's The Wildlife Concert. He wrote A Song For All Lovers for their deep and abiding love for each other and for the state of Alaska. The song's beauty gave rise to my curiousity. And, recently, while watching a documentary of Mardy's life, I became determined to read this book about her life.

This book is a must have. Mrs. Murie paints with words, a picture so vivid of Alaska's tundras and plains, that I felt as if I were part of it. The lifestyle was hard, but satisfying, and this woman's life was nothing short of fascinating. Mardy Murie is a living testament to the strength and beauty of women, and she leaves a shining example of what a woman can do. In her assistance in Olaus' work for the ANWR and other Alaskan Land Conservancies, to her carrying on of that work, she is a beacon to us all of what we can do.

Buy it...read it. You will fall in love with Alaska and with Mardy.

"My sense of wilderness is personal" - Margaret E. Murie, May 9, 2003
Mardy Murie is often referred to as "The Grandmother of American Conservation" and "The Grand Dame of the American Conservation movement, but somehow after reading her story, these titles barely seem adequate to describe such an incredible and personal woman. While we may liken Murie to women like Rachel Carson or Anna Botsford Comstock, Murie's journey is singular. We follow her from her childhood in Wyoming to graduation at the University of Alaska, through love, into the far reaches of the Alaskan North.
Murie successfully bridges the personal and the political, her own life and her life's work, her love for one man and her love for their work together. You will laugh with her, you will cry with her, feel scared for her, and come to love her. She will become your hero.
We must recognize Murie as an American treasure, but we must also recognize that Murie's inspiration is perhaps more important now than it ever was. The most obvious reason for this statement is the continuing struggle to preserve the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from growing oil interests. We must also recognize, however, that Murie could be the inspiration for the young generation of leaders in conservation-- a group of leaders that undoubtedly must include women. That there are very so few women leaders in conservation has caused the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women to recognize the struggle of women in their efforts to achieve leadership positions in the conservation movement. Other organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, the Sierra Club, and the National Wildlife Federation have launched campaigns to attract more women into leadership roles. The lack of women in environmental leadership reflects America's view of rugged individualism in our collective imagination...nowhere has this myth been more prominent than in the discussion of America's last frontier-- a very personal discussion for Ms. Murie.
Not only is Margaret E. Murie a woman in the conservation movement, but she is an American treasure with a very personal and very political story to tell. Even as she approaches her 101st birthday in August, she continues to speak out for Alaska's lands, peoples, and wildlife. Her story is not one of fame, comfort, or glory, but it is her American story. Mardy Murie will become your hero, your inspiration and your friend. Take the journey with her. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

This book is a must!!, February 26, 2007
I met the authors on a recent cruise to Antarctica and could not wait to purchase the book. During the cruise, they gave insightful and interesting talks about the continent. Once they told us about the book I was first in line in Ushuaia, Argentina at the only bookstore where it was available as I was still away and the book was not available at Amazon.com yet. This book is a must for anyone thinking of going or is going to Antacrtica. It is a beautiful book and I went and saw a lot of the places in the book. It reads easily as there is plenty of information on the wildlife and various places to see, but there is not too much information to overwhelm you. It is also very compact and can easily be brought on a trip. My only regret is that I didn't have it before I went to Antarctica.

Great Book, January 26, 2008
This is a great guide book designed for people cruising to Antarctica. The person who gave it one star doesn't know what s/he is talking about. It's not meant to be a coffee table book or a gift book: 5x7 is the ordinary (and very convenient) size for a guide book.

A must have, as the field guide, for your cruise, February 18, 2009
This book is for those that are getting ready or are just thinking about a cruise to Antarctica. However, this is NOT about selecting a cruise line. This is a field guide(with photos and maps) when cruising around the Antarctic Peninsula and South Shetland Islands. It includes:
* Landing Places
* Penguins and sea birds
* Whales and seals
* Plants
* Geology and landscapes
* History
* Antarctic conservation
Since most of the cruises from Chile or Argentina go to the places covered in this guide this is the books for you.

Good Introductory book, June 14, 2008
This book is quite interesting as an introduction to visiting Antarctica. The contents deals with the oceanography of the area surrounding the continent. Title could be misleading if one thought that the book was a guide to various "cruises" or cruise ships that go to Antartica.

It's not what you think, November 28, 2007
I bought this book as a gift for a scientist who will be going to Antarctica next year. It was a mistake. It doesn't have the information I was expecting.
In addition, this is not a full-sized book. It's only 5 inches by 7 inches.
I don't want to ruin someone's livelihood so I will try to be fair. This book is not suitable for my purposes and might be right for a tourist to tuck into a suitcase.

... Read more

Editorial Review

The third edition of Evolutionary Psychology continues to be the premier text for the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology, and this major update contains nearly 400 new references. ... Read more

Reviews

A triumphantly successful milestone for modern psychology., February 3, 1999
Professor Buss has taken upon himself the formidable challenge of producing the first evolutionary psychology textbook, a milestone that is long overdue. In his endeavor he has succeeded magnificently. In 411 pages he manages a sterling job of covering the most important topics in evolutionary psychology, bringing to bear the most up to date literature in a simple to read yet academically compelling format. He begins with a complete and intelligent introduction to both evolutionary theory and the events leading to the development of an evolutionary psychology. Thereafter, he covers broad branches of human behavior - kin relations, cooperative relationships, warfare, aggression, status-seeking, parenting and, of course, human mating strategies. This last topic is covered in several different chapters and highlights the author�s own valuable, ground-breaking work done in the area. His book provides a miraculous combination of both utterly fascinating and effortless reading, rare qualities in textbooks. No review can be complete without mention of a few blemishes, however minor and in this case it is particularly tempting to simply omit them entirely. However, Dr. Buss occasionally relies heavily, too heavily perhaps, on secondary or general sources of information (i.e., Dawkins, de Waal, Pinker) when more research oriented sources are available. No doubt this stems, at least in part, from the fact that there is simply not as much primary literature on the subject as one could hope for (at least where humans are concerned). This will undoubtedly be improved by the time the next edition rolls off the press. Too, one would greatly hope that future editions of this text might include a section on foraging/hunting and food adaptations since they are so fundamental to survival and because so many other primate species display overt and well-studied feeding adaptations. However, such minor details are utterly dwarfed by the magnitude, importance and quality of this work. The breadth, depth and timeliness of this textbook cannot be overstated. If you are planning on teaching an undergraduate course on evolutionary psychology or are simply interested in learning more about the subject, this is, without question, the most authoritative and comprehensive vehicle available, eclipsing even the extraordinary Adapted Mind.

Editorial Review

Reviews

Great, portable guide, March 5, 2001
I bought this book in preparation for a trip 'South' in December 1999/January 2000 and it was an extremely useful guide to wildlife in general but especially good for penguin information. The drawings by an ancestor of Robert F. Scott's are lifelike, and engaging art as well. The brief summaries of natural and exploration history are accessible and informative. If you are looking for a portable guide to peninsular wildlife get the book--you won't regret it.

A good, portable guide to commonly seen Antarctic wildlife, February 13, 1998
If you are visiting the Antarctic Peninsula and nearby islands, this guide is a good field guide to identifying, and learning about, the most common Antarctic fauna you will experience, including birds, mammals and cetaceans. (It is not a comprehensive guide for htose desiring in depth information and identification of every species.) Jos� Kirchner

gorgeous illustrations, info. you won't find anywhere else, July 2, 2005
This has got to be the single best guide to Antarctica's unusual wildlife. Everything is covered here, from Gentoo Penguins to Crab-Eater Seals (which don't actually eat crabs). Beautiful illustrations make it easy to identify birds & other animals while your out on the ice. If you're going to the White Continent, you'll want to stash this little book in your daypack. This book was useful when my husband & I visited the Antarctic peninsula, which we chronicle in our DVD "T&T's Real Travels in Antarctica" (also available on amazon.com).

A handbook essential for any Antarctica-bound traveler, June 7, 2005
The price tag may seem steep for the fourth edition of this 144-page paperback - but where else are you going to find details on the wildlife of Antarctica, tailored as a take-along tote for the Antarctica-bound traveler? Color drawings by Dafila Scott accompany nature history descriptions of each creature and discussions of identification specific to Antarctica, from contending with visibility factors to seasonal identification features. Antarctica: A Guide To The Wildlife is a unique and strongly recommended "take-along" handbook essential for any Antarctica-bound traveler.

Great guide, March 19, 2009
I used this in Antarctica and found it perfect for wildlife viewing. It has size comparison charts for each animal, and useful, detailed text. It is also small and light enough to carry around in the freezing weather in Antarctica. Both this book and a trip to the white continent are highly recommended. ... Read more

Editorial Review

In 1914, Captain Ernest Shackleton and his crew set out for the South Pole. They never made it. Within sight of land, the ship ran into dangerous waters filled with chunks of ice. Then the sea froze around them, and there was no hope of rescue. The incredible true story of an eighteen-month odyssey. Mile 4 Road to Reading books help kids take the plunge into more complicated stories. Bite-size chapters make these books more challenging while the full-color artwork helps readers understand the text. ... Read more

Reviews

Wonderful introduction to Shackleton, May 18, 2008
I have been a huge fan of the Shackleton expetion/adventure ever since I learned about it. Mostly, I have gleaned my information from more adult sources. Then much to my surprise I stumble across the "kiddie version" that summarizes the incredible survival story in an easy-to-read chapter book. The story is still there, the writing is at a great level for readers ready for something a bit more challenging, and I loved the mix of illustrations and authentic photographs.

Great book, October 14, 2008
My son (almost 7) just finished this book, he liked a lot. It was an easy, interesting story, with good lessons. I recommend the book.

Great 4 ESOL Class, April 27, 2010
This is a great book for kids and adults alike! I am currently using it with my adult ESOL class, and they're really enjoying it. The pictures bring this amazing true story to life!

Excellent nonfiction title for young readers, March 9, 2010
My six-year-old child finished this book recently. We, both, enjoyed the writing, illustrations, and photographs. My child reads at around middle 3rd, early 4th grade level so this book was not technically diffcult for her but it did hold her attention very well. I have found the Stepping Stones series of books to be an excellent source of light reading for children who enjoy books with strong plots, especially nonfiction. ... Read more

Editorial Review

This Halcyon Classics ebook THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD documents the Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica from 1910-1913.Written by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the survivors of the expedition, the ill-fated journey to the South Pole was led by Sir Robert Falcon Scott.Scott and three companions reached the Pole in January 1912, only to find they had been beaten to their objective by Norwegian Roald Amundsen by thirty-three days.

Scott and his three companions perished just eleven miles short of a supply depot on their return journey northward; their remains were discovered by Cherry-Garrard.Upon his return to England, Cherry-Garrard published his recollections as THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD

This ebook is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.
... Read more

Editorial Review

Australian Sir Douglas Mawson chose not to go with Robert Scott to the South Pole in 1911, but instead set out on a less prestigious expedition to chart Antarctica's coastline. Mawson was not inexperienced - in 1908 he had led an important expedition to the South Magnetic Pole - but nothing could have prepared him for what happened on this trek. Mawson's task was to chart 1,500 miles of coastline and claim it for the British crown. Setting out in a party of three, he faced mountains, crevasse-filled glaciers, and 60-mile-per-hour winds. Six weeks and 320 miles out, one man fell into a crevasse, along with the tent, most equipment, and all but a week's supply of food. After losing his other companion and the dogs, Mawson fought his way back home alone through horrific wind, snow, and cold to leave his own mark in history. ... Read more

Reviews

Readable but Undistinguished Account, November 20, 2001
This slim volume details the plight of the Antarctic expedition of the Australian explorer Douglas Mawson in 1911. Seemingly few people are aware of this particular foray into the polar south, as the Scott tragedy looms largest in the public consciousness and there is a new vogue for the remarkable exploits of Ernest Shackleton in this same time frame. However, this is a story worth telling.

For those who are not obsessively interested in accounts of polar exploration, this books serves as a good introduction to the genre. It's almost novelistic in its easy yet vivid narrative flow, and unlike more encylopedic works, it avoids getting bogged down in excessive side treks about rival explorers or earlier achievements in the mapping and scouting of the continent.

Even so, it has a glaring weakness in its lack of footnotes or a bibliography. Bickel recounts entire conversations verbatim and even details the thoughts of several individuals, all without documenting the sources for such material. Since some of the quoted individuals died on the journey, one can only assume that the author is drawing from their expedition journals, and yet there is only a vague allusion to this in the afterword. More annoyingly, Bickel describes the immediate events preceding the death of one of the men from the point of view of the soon-to-be-deceased explorer, even though his two surviving comrades weren't even eyewitnesses to the moment of the tragedy. This gives rise to the suspicion that poetic license may have been somewhat abused in the composition of this book.

There are a number of photos of expedition members, their ship, and their camp. Sadly, no map is provided, making it difficult for the reader to follow Mawson's progress.

Bickel certainly does good work in shedding some light on this little known expedition, especially on the causes of the death of the second explorer. But the lack of notation of sources is a serious drawback.

One of the few honest accounts of polar exploration, April 5, 2000
I read this book when it was first published and was captivated by the heroic nature of Mawson's journey druing which both of his companions died.It is a remarkable tribute to a man of very unusual abilities. Unlike the Scott expeditions, which were of no significant scientific importance, Mawson was a trained geologist with an interest in locating the South Magnetic Pole and extablishing its geographic variation. He was also the first to establish communication by radio to Australia from Antarcticia via a relay station on Mcquery Island. Read this book to appreciate how a man driven to the extreme manages to survive under conditions which are almost impossible to believe. Ponder on his accomplishments compared to those of Scott and marvel at how the British managed to make a hero out of Scott, a villain of Amundsen and a foot note in polar history of Mawson. Amundsen is reported to have described Scott as one of the better sled dogs the British brought to Antarcticia. This was in part a response to the way his success was received by them. For those interested in the details of Mawson's Austrialian- New Zealand expedition, a reprint of his own book is now available. It makes interesting reading as well

Most memorable True-Life Book, May 17, 2003
I first 'heard' Mawson's Will as it was read, unabridged, on PBS in 1979. I soon found the book and have read it repeatedly over the years. Mawson's Will, along with Niven's Known Space series of Sci.Fi. adventures might be all a soul would need if sealed up with only a few books to choose from.
The description of the soles of Mawson's feel as they separted from his body and had to be tied on with leather strips is something you'll never forget, remembering he was hundreds of miles from safety. He ate what he could find without knowing he was slowly poisoning himself with excess vitimin A with every bite. The author writes in a way that makes the story seem immediate and real.

Looking for inspiration?, February 22, 2000
Douglas Mawson is one of the great explorers of our millenium and this is probably the best survival adventure story ever told. The harshest conditions imaginable are revealed to Mawson in body, mind and spirit.

Leonard Bickel attains exceptional results transcribing Mawsons field notes, creating a readable account of an enormous struggle few have heard of and one not likely to be matched. Not even Shackelton's story measures up to this one.

Recommneded for those who must persevere.

Bickel's Gift, October 15, 2005
Rarely has fiction served the truth so well. Rarely has the truth served fiction so well.

Mawson's own account of his ordeal, in "The Home of The Blizzard", seems relatively matter of fact. We may not have marvelled at Mawson's accomplishment in surviving if we relied only on his way of telling it. Although a good writer, his specialities were geography and exploration.

Bickel's presentation here in "Mawson's Will" makes Mawson's accomplishment more touching than Mawson's own presentation. But it took an extraordinary writing accomplishment by Bickel to convey Mawson's accomplishment. Poetic license? To fail to understand how much faithful art it took to go from Mawson's diaries and book to Bickel's account would be to not appreciate how much effort and skill it took for Bickel to bring Mawson's tale so fully alive. If Bickel hadn't taken poetic license, this tale may have been of more interest to the most purist historian but it would have been of far less human interest. Sensitive to our lack of understanding of the Antartic experience, Bickel put us there in a way we never could have gotten from Mawson's own account. The last one hundred pages of "Mawson's Will" are as riveting as anything I've read in years.

Bickel's faithfulness to Mawson has made this a special work of art. Because of Bickel, we can be amazed at how Mawson survived and understand something profound about the human will.

P.S. I wake up the next day to find the story is still strong on my mind. Mawson returned to Australia to find his beloved waiting, married her, in time actually returned to the Antartic for exploration, and lived til 73. While we may never face as extreme a challenge as he did, there seems lessons here in the value of perserverence, in the benefits of careful self-management, and in the role of loved ones in making life worth living. This is an unusual book and Mawson and Bickel have made a special contribution far beyond whether land was claimed through exploration.

If you think life is tough..., February 23, 2001
There is something buried deep within us all called the survival instinct. It's in the cancer patient fighting for another day no matter how painful, it's in the Apollo 13 astronauts alone and thousands of miles from safety, the lone sailor or even that person you pass on the street and barely notice.

Perhaps it's the result of 4 billion years of evolution, an involuntary reaction to the need to continue the species forward. Or maybe it's altogether more spiritual, part of the journey that gives life meaning and value. Whatever, clearly it's a very important part of what makes us who we are.

But in these comfortably numb times, it's all too easy to lose touch with these very basic principles of existence. We are not challenged for survival and we barely understand that such a need can exist.

Which is why Mawson's Will, the story of the epic battle for life by Antarctic explorer Douglas Mawson, is more than just an epic tale of adventure. While his lonely struggle to cross 300 miles of frozen wasteland after the death of his colleagues is in itself a wonderful tale of courage and resourcefulness, it resonates far deeper than just an explorer's tale.

Wracked by the pain of mysterious illness (later discovered to be fatal levels of Vitamin A poison from eating husky dog livers to stay alive) and caught in the most hostile environment on the planet, Mawson has many reasons to give up. Agony, loneliness and despair were his constant companions. On more than one occasion, dangling suspended by a rope through a fallen crevice all it would take was to reach into his pocket for the knife that would cut the thin line that held him in limbo. It a moment it would be over, the pain and useless struggle over.

But Mawson refused to succumb, and eventually, through extraordinary efforts, survived. Even to this day it hard to imagine how.

In his wonderful account of this story, culled mostly from Mawson's own heart wrenching diary of the events, veteran Australian writer Lennard Bickell has managed to capture superbly the details of Mawson's battle to survive.

While he spends little time contemplating the inner meaning of such a struggle, it is plainly there for the reader to contemplate. We are left to consider our own resources, our own inner strength. For anyone involved in a difficult situation that requires courage and fortitude, 'Mawson's Will' is an inspiration. And for those of us merely intrigued by the real nature of existence, here at least is a definition of the outer borders of human willpower, that strange and unknown land where the real world meets the spiritual.

A wonderful book.

A must for the hard-core Antarctic fan, September 9, 2003
It's remarkable that people well-versed in the classic polar adventures of Shackleton, Amundsen, and Scott often barely know who Douglas Mawson is. Mawson's story of survival in the Antartic--alone and without food following the death of his companions--is the equal of these more familiar tales and dates from the same era. Bickel has a good grip on his story and writes well.

Every reader looking to complete his/her knowledge of polar exploration, or just looking for another adventure "fix," will want to read this story. Readers new to the topic may find they understand Mawson's story better if they begin with the better-known stories.

Only the Good Die Young, February 20, 2002
Lennard Bickel has written the story of one of the most courageous of his countrymen in history--and that's saying alot when the country is Australia! The depictions of trekking through the worst blizzards, glaciers and crevasses that the worst continent can offer are vivid and true. The recreation of the fortitude and humanity of Mawson's 1912-13 expedition's members shines with a humbling reality- humbling to us in our 21st century ease. The pathos of reading about the suffering of these warm, brave men (and dogs) finds compensation in tracing Mawson's own barely successful trek back to camp. While the author's subtitle seems self-important, any unbiased reviewer couldn't quibble over its accuracy.

The reader from Houston has touched upon the one weak spot in the book, but Bickel reconstructed the thoughts and conversations of the men from their diaries. My only beef is that he provides no footnotes, and in places the thoughts seem to be intrusions of Bickel's own(especially in cases such as what is going through the mind of a trekker just before he falls to his death). At least Bickel's artistic license is used with skill in such places. This book makes these explorers' efforts come to life even better than Shackelton's own books, which shouldn't be missed either.

Never Give Up, January 13, 2006
Lennard Bickel's "Mawson's Will" is the story of Australian geologist Douglas Mawson's 1911-1912 Expedition to Antarctica, and more particularly, his desparate struggle to return alone from a sledging expedition gone badly.

While exploring a previously untraveled portion of the Antarctic coastal plateau, Mawson loses one traveling companion, and most of his team's supplies and sled dogs, in a crevasse. His other companion dies an agonizing and lingering death of a mysterious illness. Mawson, himself suffering the same symptoms, marshals his remaining food and limited strength to walk back to the expedition's base through horrendous conditions of weather and terrain.

Bickel, working from the surviving diaries of the expedition members and interviews with family members, does a remarkable job of recreating Mawson's heroic struggle. The story is told in the third person, yet through Bickel's narrative, we are able to share in Mawson's heart-breaking daily dilemmas, as he leans out his remaining food, adapts his gear to overcome the ice and snow, and forces his rapidly deteriorating body to carry on. Mawson, possessed of a fierce will to live and a strong faith in God, was determined to fight to the last step and be open to any possibility of survival or rescue. Bickel's narrative allows us to appreciate the inner struggle of will as well as the outer one against the elements.

Mawson's expedition occured in the same timeframe as the Amundsen and Scott expeditions to the South Pole, and consequently received much less notice at the time. Bickel's narrative does an excellent job of capturing the dramatic arc of the expedition's story. This book is highly recommended to readers of polar exploration.

A story of incredible courage, March 1, 2000
It's good to see this book back in print. Douglas Mawson, a veteran of the 1907-1909 Shackleton expedition, returned to the Antarctic in 1912 with his own team. His sledge journey with two companions turned from a harsh but rewarding exploration into a terrifying fight for survival in an instant. At almost the same time as Scott was busily scribbling inspiring hoo-hah in his diary trying to cover up his appalling faults of leadership and organization, Mawson was courageously fighting for his life and refusing to lie down and die. An incredible story! One hopes that Australia remembers Sir Douglas Mawson and his fortitude. He is an example to all of us. ... Read more

Editorial Review

South America, though home to about one-third of the world's bird species and twice as many endemic families of birds as any other continent, has the world's sparsest population of birdwatchers. Birds of Southern South America and Antarctica illustrates and describes all the known species--more than 1,000 of them--in a vast swath of this underexplored birder's paradise, from Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, southern Brazil, and Uruguay to parts of Antarctica. Just some of the birds it covers are teals, tinamous, chachalacas, conebills, cuckoos, macaws, parakeets, parrots, penguins, nightjars, hummingbirds, ovenbirds, tyrants, and tanagers. The habitats range from torrid rainforests and cloudforests to grasslands, the world's driest desert, second highest mountain range, and ice caps.

The 97 color plates depict each species' male in breeding plumage, with the female and young often shown as well. On the facing page are concise textual descriptions of each species, highlighting not only salient physical features and behavioral patterns but the calls or songs of each. Casual birders and ornithologists contemplating a journey to the region, or simply interested in a one-volume overview of its bird life, will not want to miss this book. ... Read more

Reviews

a good guide for visiting birders, January 29, 2003
This guide is good; probably the best available for the region. The birders I ran into (even a park ranger) had this guide. It is a convenient size, fitting easily in my cargo-shorts pockets while both hands held my binoculars. It describes most of species (I found a few exceptions, eg. Gray Gull, but it is fairly complete). I did find that some of the illustrations were somewhat simplistic. More detailed descriptions would be useful, but could also negatively affect the weight of the book. I used it in Parque Nacional Iguazu and los Esteros del Ibera, and it served its purpose well.

Excellent!, April 8, 1999
(From Planeta magazine) - Every bird species you may come across in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruaguay and southern Boliva and Brazil is described here, with more than 1,000 species illustrated in color. The text compliments the visuals, providing info about habitat, sounds and identification features. Excellent!

There Is A Better Choice for Antarctic/South Georgia Birding, January 23, 2006
I was extremely frustrated using this book on my recent trip to Antarctica and South Georgia. Some of the plates do not do an accurate job of depicting the birds and the distribution maps are also not entirely accurate. The professional ornithologist on my trip agreed with my observations and recommended that I purchase another book: "Birds of Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, and the Antarctic Peninsula" by E. Couve and C. Vidal.

A good area guide, March 5, 2006
This book is a very good guide. The thing I like most about it is its size. It is actaully smaller than "Birds of North America". It is a field guide not a desk reference like Howell and Webb "Birds of Mexico", that is about 3x larger or Hilty "Birds of Venezuela" 4x larger. These two books are actually too large to use as field guides. Many rip out the illustrations and bind them separately, because the books are too big to lug around. The only reason it did not receive 5 stars is because the range maps are in the back of the book. But "Birds of Costa Rica" does not even have range maps and it is considered excellent by many.

A good guide for a beginner, April 4, 2002
It was the first time for me in South America, so I didn't know nothing about the birds there. I had the chance to find this guide, which helped me very much, thanks to the good figures. The text is a little bit poor, but for a beginner it's enough. For some families like the Furnariids and the Tyrannids the figures weren't always good for recognising the species in the field. But, in general, I found this guide very useful and the best between all other guides of the region which I saw.

Consider an alternative guide!!, February 24, 2007
This guide book covers a wide range of habitats: from the jungle tropics to the southern tip of the continent and even Antactica. If you are going to be traveling widely, this guide might well be your best bet. The illustrations are good and the descriptions on the facing page are quite useful. The major drawback is that the distribution maps are at the back and that's annoying. (Once you've found an illustration that seems to identify the bird you're seeing, you need to note both the plate and illustration number before heading back to the range maps to see if it's likely to be found in your present location. All too often I found that wasn't the case!)

If you're going to do your birdwatching in or near the mountains or along the southern coast, I'd suggest that you carefully consider, instead, Birds of Chile by Jaramillo et al, a Princeton Guide. It's a superb field guide with many illustrations of the birds in flight, as well as sitting still; its descriptions are excellent and the range maps are on the facing page. I bought a copy of it on my return from Patagonia and it's definitely the guide I'll take next time -- not only to Chile, but to southern Argentina, as well!

A better guide for Argentina..., July 5, 2006
I found this guide to be occasionally inaccurate and lacking much needed info for any serious birding, though it is useful as a backup/reference for other area guides. Instead of this book, I recommend you consider "Birds of Argentina & Uruguay" by Tito Narosky and Dario Yzurieta. If not easy to find on Amazon, try Birdlife International, or just pick up a copy in Buenos Aires.

Southern South America Field Guide, January 11, 2007
This appears to be a compact but comprehensive field guide to the birds of southern South America. The art work is adequate, but the plates are crowded and disorganized, and it is sometimes difficult to find the specific number you are looking for to coordinate with the printed information. The other drawback is that the range maps are at the back of the book, a failing common to many older guides. In the absence of anything better, this should serve the purpose well.

Could be a lot better..., March 28, 2008
Since there are few complete pocket guides for South America I though that this was worth a chance. However, there are areas for improvement- many of the illustrations are strangely proportioned- heads are too big or too small, bodies elongated or squat, and so forth. The poor use of space on the plates is surprising for a book produced by Princeton. To top in all off the maps are all in the back of the book, meaning that you are constantly flipping back and forth. I ordered this with "Birds of South America" by Erize et al., which is of a similar format and also published by Princeton. No problems with that book at all...but too bad I can't recommend this one...

Fills a vital need, February 11, 2009
We travelled down the coast of South America and on to the Antarctic Peninsula, then back up the South Atlantic via the Falkland Islands to debark the cruise ship at Buenos Aires. We then spent a month birding Argentina. We practically wore this book out, as it is the only one with such breadth as to cover most of that journey; otherwise we'd have needed a library weighing tens of kilos and costing hundreds of dollars. The book is laid out well, and although we had an initial objection to the range maps being in a separate section, this feature turned out to be quite useful, since we could quickly rule out related species due to range by quick view of a single page.

The illustrations are not of the quality one associates with a book from Sibley, Peterson, or Ridgely, but in most cases they were adequate for ID. I'd recommend this book to anyone visiting multiple countries in South America, especially if you are lucky enough to be able to cross to Antarctica.

The book is somewhat out of date as to naming and Taxonomy, but that is to be expected from the date of publishing. I'd buy a more recent edition in a minute. ... Read more