Rosove stays modestly in the background and lets his explorers, who were often excellent prose stylists, speak for themselves. He quotes judiciously from diaries, ships' logs and published accounts of journeys so desperate that explorers ended up eating the rawhide lashings of their sleds, as well as their sled dogs (whose livers contained so much vitamin A that the Australian, Douglas Mawson nearly died of hypervitaminosis, and had to watch as the skin sloughed off his feet in damp shreds). "Here is the sanctuary of sanctuaries, where Nature reveals herself in all her formidable power," wrote one explorer, Jean-Baptiste Charcot. "The man who penetrates his way into these regions feels his soul uplifted." Behind the somewhat mawkish title, lie astonishing feats of bravery, endurance and resourcefulness that make the exploits of modern astronauts seem almost routine. Indeed the parallels between the Antarctic and outer space are eerily similar, with the icebergs resembling asteroid belts that could shatter a ship's hull in a moment, condemning all aboard to death, beyond any hope of rescue. Two of the ships used were actually named Discovery and Challenger. In 1773 the continent was first glimpsed by the British explorer, James Cook, who fully recognized the dangers of the ice: "Surrounded on every side with danger, it was natural for us to wish for day-light. This when it came, served only to increase our apprehensions, by exhibiting to our view, those huge mountains of ice, which in the night, we had passed without seeing." Cook beat a retreat and predicted that "no man will ever venture farther than I have done; and that the lands which may lie to the South will never be explored..." Cook was wrong, of course, but the effort of exploring Antarctica took almost superhuman courage. The explorers came on ships with names like the Erebus, the Terror, the Fram, the Pourquoi Pas?, L'Astrolabe, the Resolution, the Relief and the Aurora. They climbed mountains and volcanoes. They advanced gingerly over chasms spanned by treacherous snow-bridges. They drank snowmelt mixed with dog's blood and slept in caves carved out of ice. They froze to death, starved to death or fell to their deaths in crevasses hundreds of feet deep. They returned to glory, or to oblivion, changed forever by their sojourns on the frozen tip of the planet. Rosove includes the big names like Robert Scott, Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton. But he goes well beyond these giants and includes 20 more explorers, people like James Clark Ross, for whom the Ross Ice Shelf is named; Jean-Baptiste Charcot, who joked that the Antarctic was one place where you never needed to worry that you left your umbrella at home, as it never rained; and Wilhelm Filchner, a German explorer who adapted the auxiliary engine of his ship, the Bjorn, so that its boiler could run off seal blubber and whole penguins, which were flung into the furnace like cordwood (already dead, one hopes). There is a first-day-of-creation quality to the book. We look on as a great region, whose entire existence was unknown 228 years ago, gradually enters the sphere of human knowledge, and is intellectually assimilated, mapped and named. Beyond the people-names, like the Weddell Sea, the Bellingshausen Sea and the Adelie penguin (affectionately named by French explorer Jules S.-C. Dumont d'Urville after his wife), we visit Cape Disappointment, the Danger Islands, Port Circumcision, Deception Island and the Drygalski Ice Tongue. Behind each name lies a curious story, an amusing anecdote, or a history of horror. Over all looms the spell of the continent. "Great God! this is an awful place...!" exclaimed the crestfallen Robert Falcon Scott, who fought his way to the South Pole in 1912, only to find that Roald Amundsen had beaten him by a few days. Scott went on foot. Amundsen used dogs and, when he reached the Pole, shot 24 of them and used them for food on the return trip. Scott never made it back. Others were awestruck by the region's beauty. A member of Shackleton's expedition marveled at the walls of a thousand-foot-wide crevasse, which "were splintered and crumpled, glittering in the sunlight with a million sparklets of light. Towering above were titanic blocks of carven ice. The whole was the wildest, maddest and yet the grandest thing imaginable." The place could drive people insane, or nearly. Scott's decision to pull his sleds with horses and manpower, instead of dogs, proved suicidal. Shackleton spoke of an eery "fourth presence" that seemed to guide his party of three across the mountains and glaciers of South Georgia. He refused to elaborate. "The utter desolation, the awesome, unearthly silence pervading the whole landscape - all this combines to form a scene which is worth many a sacrifice to behold for once, although living alone in such surroundings would undoubtedly end in speedy madness," wrote Henryk Johan Bull, after reaching Antarctica in 1894. Rosove keeps a cool head, writing about this cold, unmooring place. In "Let Heroes Speak" Rosove approaches each story methodically. He gives us the names of all the expedition members, with a bit of background on each. He often follows them beyond the Antarctic into later life, with fascinating results -- Ross, the hero of the great ice shelf, died a recluse and a drunk. Each journey's preparations are described meticulously, the outfitting, the provisions, the stores, the ship. Rosove is precise about dates and geography. The maps at the back are clear and useful. This is consequently a lucid, useful reference book on the Antarctic that reads like an exciting collection of short stories.

This is a fantastic read.

It's about Antarctic explorations beginning with Captain Cook in 1772 through Ernest Shakleton's final effort in 1922, and all those in between -- notably Ross, Scott, Amundsen, Mawson, et al.

The subject matter is interesting, of course, but that's not why I am recommending it. After completing the first couple of chapters, I read on because there was nothing else I could do. It is that riveting. Even where I knew the outcome of a particular expedition in advance, I found my heart racing with anticipation. Frankly, it is one of the most exciting books I have ever read.

Anyone who enjoys true (supported by 26 pages of notes and bibliography) adventure books, along the line of Perfect Storm, Into Thin Air, Ship of Gold, etc. [ this seems to be a popular genre at present ] will love "Let Heroes Speak".

Turning to page 74, my Danish-born wife, Aino, was amazed to discover her little town of Scoresbysund. She spent her fomative years(age 5-12)growing up there, where her father, Dr. Werner Mortensen, served as the sole doctor for the area of 3 villages.

Galen Rowell's photography captures the typical beauty of a Scandinavian mileau, even though it is truly a facade for the garbage that the typical native Greenlander casts no further than his front door!

His words portray the many problems of the native Inuits, who have been unable to adapt to the influence of Danish culture and progress. For Rowell to elaborate on the problems of alcholism, violent crime, and the high rate of suicide in a village of only 500, distinguishes him as an author that researchs his subjects quite well! It brought back memories for my wife of the "Grundlander" that beat his wife with the carcass of a frozen seal, only to have his wife bite of his ear.

The large yellow building in the left foreground is the eight bed hospital; the little red house with white trimmed windows that is over to the immediate left is where family Mortensen grew up from 1966-72. This book really takes my wife back,and helps me see things that were only in her mind's eye. It also brings her up to the what the present day Scoresbysund has become. And now that my family will be moving to Fairbanks,Alaska, my wife can get a sneak preview of our future from this marvelous book. Having lived in Alaska myself, I definitely recommend this book for its shear splendid photography and candid commentary. Great job Galen!

This is much more than a coffee table book, though its unique photographs of the pristine beauty of the Arctic and Antarctic would impress even the most casual of browsers. A short story about each photo is included, along with more general, thoughtful and poignant commentary from someone that is truly in touch with the global environment. Rowell is one of the great nature photographers, and this is a stunning collection

This book must be added to your collection if you are a true student of the Shakleton story. It combines the best of all the books (picture books, biographies, and personal accounts) out there with beautiful photographs in the tradition of National Geographic and the color shots truly enliven the original black and whites from the expedition. The maps are outstanding and there are reproductions of pages from Shackleton's and Hurley's diaries.
I haven't really found a book on the Shackleton story that is horribley bad. Maybe the story is so inspiring it tells itself. Trapped by The Ice, the picture book for kids by Michael McCurdy, is the worst example I know and I still like that for the rendering of the sea leopard leaping at Ordes-Lee, the officer in charge of food supplies. There are better children's books, Sea of Ice, by Monica Kulling, a fairly easy read for upper elementary students with beautiful watercolors, Trial By Ice, by K. M. Kostyal, a photobiography of Shackleton, Ice Story for middle school students, with black and white photographs and a magnificent large picture book with paintings and photographs, Spirit of Endurance, by Jennifer Armstrong. Get them all!

The major events of the ill-fated voyage of Sir Ernest Shakelton's attempt to cross Antarctica are well known. However, what most do not know or understand is the depth and breadth of this extraordinary man. Shackleton was not only a bonified explorer, more importantly he was a noble leader.

"Leaders do not force their fellow citizens to follow, they inspire them to do so."

If there is one thing to learn from this book, it is the true meaning of leadership and how important willing-loyalty is to our basic survival. Seen in the face of unimaginable odds, they survived - and they survived in whole: worn and frazzled from nearly 2 years of struggle, they were rescued mentaly tough and spiritually whole. In no small part, this was due to the quality of leadership demonstrated by Shackleton: it was embraced and reflected in his men.

It is amazing, this entity we call 'the human spirit'. If trained - but, not broken - like a fine horse, it has great wonders to show and is a true beauty to behold. Such are the many lessons learned from the tales of this "Endurance" voyage: did anyone ever wonder about the naming of that ship? What started out as a championing exploration, became a struggle with life itself to survive.

Likewise, what most will perceive as an "interesting read", will soon become an invaluable source for life-guiding principles. Get the book - read it - and put these incalculably precious lessons into practice in your own life. You never know when you'll need the endurance.

I spent 4 month on an Australian Station (Casey, No 1 station, best home brew (thanks to Pitty) and extensive skiing area) and I read the book with a smile in my face. All the little stories which really happen and the unbelievible light making this continent so unique are in this book. If you are intrested in live at the most isolated area of the world of a grimm cold environment, countless parties of men and women behaving like children, a breathtaking nature and the technical phaenomens which only occure deep down under, than grap this book. It's worth the 58 bucks they are asking for.

Tim Bowden has captured the history and anecdotes of Antarctica very well. I loved the book and it is a treasured edition on my bookshelf. The fact that I am an Australian whose name appears among the lists of those priveledged few to visit the great white land is another reason for purchasing this great book. If you have wintered in the sub-antarctic or on the Continent itself at an Australian base, then your name too will appear in the entries at the back. Its a great read for those who are interested in the history of Australians in antarctica.

Well done Tim - and thanks.

(P.s. Tim, I was the bloke who invited you to spend mid-winters day at Macca in 93!! ;-)

In the Foreword, Roland Huntford describes Amundsen's narrative as "all that Scott's is not". How right he is! This a very large book, but nonetheless an easy read. Amundsen relates a fascinating tale of fortune, misfortune, hardship, and ultimately - success. The narrative is detailed, but not overly so. In many places, a dose of humor is weaved in. Complete with numerous photos, maps, and scientific data, this book should be considered one of the great narratives of exploration. The great moral lesson of this tale is that preparedness ultimately leads to success. Is it any wonder that Roald Amundsen and his comrades won the race to the South Pole?

Recent years have seen a re-examination of the Golden Age of Antarctic Exploration. Roland Huntford in his excellent books "The Last Place on Earth" and "Shackleton" helped to debunk the myth of the glorious failure (Scott the Martyr) as an example to follow.

The greatest tale of this age was surrounded by no great tales of hardship, no honeyed or sanitised versions of the deed. In this book we hear in the words of the greatest exponent of the art of polar travel, the story of that rarest of plans - the perfectly executed coup.

For a coup it was. When Amundsen turned from the North Pole to the South after the question of "the great nail" had been settled by Cook & Peary, his decision was treated in many sectors (most notably an unbalanced and jingoistic British Press) as underhanded and double dealing. Amundens account of the reasoning behind it makes clear that any deceit was necessary to ensure no forestalling of his plans by others - not only Scott. To ensure the future of his extended plan (the drift across the Arctic which was eventually carried out in the "Maud") he knew the Press Barons would need an exclusive and juicy story. The South Pole would give him this currency.

The book is written in an honest and clean style - an extension of the Man and his nature. The hardships faced are almost disguised by the simple tale of their telling. To strike up an unknown glacier and forge his way over virgin ground on the way to the polar plateau and the Pole itself displays fortitude and grit we can only marvel at in todays world. But his description of the task is hidden behind a work-a-day narrative. To truly appreciate the splendour of the achievement is difficult in our modern era.

One cannot help but admire the total outcome of the plan. There are few tales in history and few great men who can truly say they accomplished exactly what they set out to do in the manner in which they planned. Those who can are Masters of their field. Amundsen is such a man - and master.

A feature of this book is the credit given by Amundsen to those who went with him. Where others claimed responsibility for the great deeds of their men, Amundsen retreats to the background and gives the credit to those who did the act. Natural humility is a trait of the Norwegian nature and Amundsen shows this in the writing of the book. There is no playing to the crowd but deeds are allowed to speak for themselves.

To appreciate the tale, read the book and marvel.

I live just a few miles from Oxford, Ohio and Miami University, where Dr. Green does his work when he's not away from civilization, and have sailed or swam many times at Acton Lake, which he uses in an early chapter to introduce the science of limnology, or the study of lakes.

This is a complex and ambitious book, and the result is thoroughly engrossing. It is an introduction to lake science, an adventure tale, and an account of how a scientist plans and executes his work, but these are just at the surface. It is also a personal exploration of the author's own memories and motives. Ultimately, it is a book about what moves mankind to keep learning and exploring, presented using the author as his own example.

Wondering about the powerful emotional draw that Antarctica exerts on him, the author is reminded of his boyhood, when Great Lakes winter storms would transform his town's landscape with a featureless cover of snow, allowing him to explore what became, in his imagination, an unexplored land. He describes the beauty that can be found, if one will allow himself, in the terrifying nothingness of the universe, whether it be seen in the vast coldness of space or the inhuman bleakness of an ice-covered continent. Some of his colleagues found Antactica intolerable, probably for the same reasons. He writes...

"The ice seemed a reminder of the universe at large, of the universe as accident, as matter blown and strewn and expanding, 'heartless' as Melville had described it, all moon-filled and dry, hung with poisoned worlds, incinerating stars, vacuums of frozen light. Loneliness, the warm sun as memory, as myth, the blankness of white landscape, in which we see no trace of ourselves, no artifact of our genius and cunning...". Reading this, I was taken back to my own boyhood to find my love of exploration awakened as I stood studying the cold and vastly distant stars from by back yard, and felt the fearful thrill of being sucked upward into the eternal void...

As a classicist and poet, I am shy - if not wary - of "hard science". I stumbled upon this book by accident, browsing the non-fiction shelves in the public library. It is unique! I have ordered it - and I'm not even quite finished with it - I am reluctant to finish this first reading, although it is five-star enjoyment. Water Ice and Stone is a "braided river" (read it and you'll see why the phrase is in quotation marks) of a) Green's personal passion for his field and his subject that took him to the Antarctic lakes again and again; b) scientific explanations of that field that are accessible and fascinating without being either patronizing or unscholarly; c)the personal reminiscences and experiences that led to his choice of profession and to the Anarctic; d) the daily observations, colleagues and acts of living while he was there; and e) the beauty and wonder and astonishment and inspiration that this world we live in has to offer any of us who will take the time to look, to understand, to see. The book is science and it is poetry; it is wonder and it is analysis; it is a marvel. My highest acolade for books in fields that I did NOT take up is: it makes me almost wish I had become a.... Water, Ice and Stone left me an almost-geochemist.

It is real good

This new book combines Charles Laseron's 1947 "South With Mawson" and Frank Hurley's 1948 "Shackleton's Argonauts" in one volume, continuing the wonderful flood of reprints relating to the heroic era of Antarctic exploration. Laseron's account of the 1912 Mawson expedition is full of human interest, and makes a useful adjunct to Mawson's own, somewhat drier account in "Home of the Blizzard." Laseron was a careful observer of his surroundings and his fellow expedition members, and his writing style is vivid and often humorous. This half of the book includes photographs by expedition photographer Frank Hurley, whose own memoirs of the Endurance voyage make up the second half of the book. Frank Hurley's "Shackleton's Argonauts" is a gripping description of the Endurance expedition, also illustrated with some of Hurley's magnificent photographs. Having served with both Sir Douglas Mawson and Sir Ernest Shackleton, Hurley compares the two men in a couple of wonderful paragraphs, concluding "Shackleton grafted science onto exploration; Mawson added exploration onto science," a very good way of summing up the differences between the leaders. Hurley also shows himself to have been an early environmentalist, and expresses in no uncertain terms his horror of the South Atlantic whaling industry and its slaughter of those great animals, commenting "I had marvelled at the devices that enabled man's ingenuity to triumph over nature's moods and most powerful creatures, but I marvelled still more that man was unable to triumph over the seemingly more potent monster of his creating; its name is greed," to which I can only add, "amen." Anyone interested in Antarctic exploration will want to add this valuable reprint to their library, and I cannot recommend it more highly.

Jennifer Owings Dewey spent four months in Antarctic sketching and photographing wildlife, and writing this wonderful book about the “last great wilderness on earth.” The trip was made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation. The book jacket claims that it is appropriate for age 7 and up… well perhaps for a precocious child. I think that ( ) has it right. Age 9 to 12 seems more appropriate.

Written as a cross between a diary and letters home, and interspersed with drawings, and photographs, this is a small, almost intimate book. I read the “Antarctic Journal” out loud to my 11 year-old daughter. We talked about each journal entry or letter home, and looked at all the pictures together. We were introduced to the Adelie penguins, nesting gentoos, blue whales, Weddell seals, and krill. We were given a little history lesson starting 200 million years ago with Gondwanaland, and many lessons in nature. Antarctic has only one year-round land-resident, a mite. It’s the size of a pinhead. Also, male and female penguins share parenting, and they are absolutely devoted parents. A “parent penguin suffering heat stroke will not abandon its nest. It will fall dead in a heap first.” Antarctica has its own etiquette. Human visitors to Antarctica are not allowed to touch any wildlife. However, penguins did check out the author, her clothes, and typewriter.

So many nature books are dry. This one is clever, well written, and interesting. It is a wonderful addition to our home library. I highly recommend it.

Non-Fiction Book Review: Antarctic Writer on Ice, by Hazel Edwards

A unique diary account of one writer's Antarctic adventure.

Only boffins and brains get to go to Antarctica. Don't they? You could certainly be forgiven for thinking this if you haven't read Antarctic Writer on Ice, an innovative account of Australian author Hazel Edward's 2001 trip to Antarctica.

Chosen, following a rigorous selection process, for the sole annual humanities berth sponsored by the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition (ANARE), Edwards travelled on the scientific resupply ship Polar Bird. The voyage, which should have taken about 3 weeks, was to be both longer and more trying than Edwards expected.

Using an interesting assortment of mediums, Edwards shares her experiences and insights. The diary includes recounts, emails, scientific reports, photographs and more, which give more than a simple chronological report of the trip. Antartic Writer on Ice is a unique insight into the Antarctic experience. As well as sharing her own emotions - from the self doubt of wondering whether she can cope, to the wonder of seeing it all for the first time - Edwards is also able to share some of the highs and lows of fellow travellers.

This is an excellent read for anyone with an interest in writing, travel, or simply life experience, and essential reading for anyone fortunate enough to be preparing for a stint in Antarctica. It would also make an excellent classroom resource, showing the different styles and formats of writing for different media and audiences.

Antarctic Writer on Ice: Diary of an Enduring Adventure, by Hazel Edwards
Common Ground Publishers, 2002
Paperback ISBN: 1 86335 090 X
eBook ISBN: 1 86335 091 8