Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Import
Label: McGraw Hill
Manufacturer: McGraw Hill
Page Count: 287
Printing Date: 1959
Publishing house: McGraw Hill
Sale Popularity Level: 855816
Studio: McGraw Hill
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
This is the story of Shackleton's incredible voyage to the South Pole
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
Earnest Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic expedition has recently become a sort of mini-industry on PBS, A&E, History Channel, BBC along with an embarrassment of riches in books, photography, websites, clubs, museums. Certainly the attention is warranted, it is one of the most incredible polar survival stories ever. However it was not always that way - after the expedition returned in 1916 it was largely overshadowed by World War I, and besides, Shackleton never even reached Antarctica, much less the South Pole, it didn't capture the publics fascination. Not until 1959 when unknown journalist Alfred Lansing published his very first and only book Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage did the world really start to notice this incredible story.
Lansing's account starts with a bang and never lets up to the last sentence - it is a thrilling edge of the seat ride where, when things can't get any worse, they do. There have been a number of other re-tellings since, including most recently by Caroline Alexander The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition (1998), however none of these match Lansings for its energy and drive. Most importantly some of the original crew members were still alive when Lansing wrote his book so he was able to get very first hand accounts - more than an archival history, it is a primary source of not only the officers but the entire crew. Based on an informal survey of Amazon best-seller lists and LibraryThing library holdings, this book is probably the single most widely read account of any polar expedition, a canonical leader of its genre. Still, for the serious student, Shackleton's own version of events in South: The Last Antarctic Expedition of Shackleton and the Endurance (1919) and Worsley's Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure (1933) are required reading and very good in their own right, I look forward to continuing my "Shackleton journey" with those books next.
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