Burleigh recounts a brief but traumatic period of RichardByrd's life based upon Byrd's diary and book "Alone." Foralmost six months, Byrd observed and recorded the Antartic night, while based in a manmade tunnel where temperatures could drop to 60 degrees below zero. What could the man have been thinking about? The intense cold and dark are nicely illustrated by Krudop's somber colors. A good initial introduction, for the younger reader, to the life of Admiral Byrd.

This is an insightful and well-researched biography. Using sources previously kept within the Oates family, including a collection of over three hundred of Captain Oates' letters and portions of his Antarctic diary, Sue Limb and P. Cordingly recreate many details of the explorer's life and experiences which had previously been unknown. The result is an account focusing on Oates' LIFE, rather than his famous DEATH after reaching the South Pole with Scott in 1912. Oates is shown to be not a sublime martyr, but instead an intelligent, remarkable man grounded in reality, whose life ended too soon as a result of the blunders of others.

This book report is about the book"In the footsteps of Scott" written by Roger Mear. He was born in 1950 and gained a fine art's degree at Norwich. This Antarctic Expedetion was suggested by Robert Swan while he was still at University. He then met Roger Mear, an was soon joined by Gareth Wood. They set out to walk to the South Pole, manhauling their sledges, with the intent of tracing Captain Scott's route. The most impressive part of the story to me was when they heard that their ship, The Southern Quest, was crushed and sunk in pack-ice off Cape Evans, cutting off all their radio-links. Their hopes of getting back alive were tremendously threatening. Throughout this electrifying journey, they faced strange, interesting, and even humorous events. They dined away the well-dresed Emperor Penguins at Cape Cozier. These strange and majestic birds were in groups huddling against the ice-cliff. From this book I learnt how people survive in harsh conditions, in a cold isolated place. I would highly recommend this book to all my friends, because it's interesting and adventurous, and one learns much about this expedetion to one of the most dangerous and unspoilt landscapes in the world. Antarcica.

This is the kind of book that stays with you long after you read it. I'd recommend it for any teen or adult with an interest in reading about adventures most of us will never experience. A very heart-warming story!

Ernest Shackleton accomplished arguably superhuman things. He was good at selecting, cajoling and inspiring men. How he brought his crew back alive from such a frozen, forbidding world, is one of the amazing miracles of the past two hundred years.
Yet a close, hard look suggests that the leadership lessons to be learned are limited for most readers. The authors try too hard to take each Shackleton episode or act as a lesson tobe learned and applied yet these lessons are not as clear as the authors might want to suggest nor are the lessons necessarily generalizeable to modern life or commerce. After reading the entire book, little remains to explain Shackleton's theory or practice of leadership, just a lot of anecdotes and incidents. Shackleton and his leadership remain inscrutable.
An amazing story, yes. An amazing leadership book, I think not.

If you want an in depth analysis of Shackleton or any other leader, go take a course, read the volumes of books on the subject, invest the effort elsewhere. Don't expect to have an in-depth analysis effectively accomplished in 200 pages.

If you want a light, entertaining, interesting read of an incredible story, touching on various leadership points, then you will find this book worthwhile.

If you are looking for a bit of spark to investigate Shackleton a bit more, then you will find this book worthwhile.

Shackleton was a very capable leader of expeditions... not a Saint. If you are looking for a look into his personal life and any shortcomings in it, you won't find it in this book... but then again, I don't think it's called Shackleton's Family Way: A Critical Account of His Family Life.

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton and 27 others started on a journey to be the first people to cross the Antarctic Continent. Their ship was caught in the ice, eventually crushed, and the story of how they all survived has become a classic. In this book, the story is retold with new insights and information. The authors focus on Shackleton as leader. The conclusions are very well drawn, and the connections and insights regarding "leadership" are true, valid, and extremely worthwhile. They make sense, they are useful, and they work! I've been to South Georgia and Elephant Island, and thus have some appreciation of the difficulties Shackleton and his men faced. His leadership skills came through for his team then, and the lessons learned are more than appropriate for leaders of today.

I wanted to point out that there are supposed to be five reviews accessible and I can only view the one from Austin, Texas. Where are the others?

The authoritive reference for what happened on Scott's polar journey - since it was written by the man himself. Don't be put off by the appalling introduction by Bainbridge (which ruins the story if you don't know all the details since it is just a brief summary of the rest of the book - just skip it!). I wouldn't recommend reading this first (try Scott by Elspeth Huxley as an intro) but for historical interest if you get into the history of the antarctic this is a must. The actual description of the southern journey only makes up the final section of the book, most of it is concerned with the depot laying and over wintering parts of the expedition. As such most of the book is mostly concerned with the details of preparing for the journey and hence probably won't appeal as a general introduction to Scott's last expedition.

While the story is known to most armchair explorers, nothing beats the saga right from the horse's mouth. Yes, the journal does drag in places, but so do long days of waiting in the Antarctic. It makes us impatient and edgy, wondering if the storms will ever end or what equipment will break next. Knowing the climax detracts nothing from how they got there--or didn't. This and Shackleton's own story really have to be read if one enjoys this kind of tale.

It may be a perfectly wonderful book but reaching the slopes of Mount Erebus is no feat since it is right outside of McMurdo Station. As a person who has spent time working at all 3 Antarctic Station, I find the book description overblown. I'm sure the book itself is full of wonderful photos as Antarctic is truly a stunning place. However, if someone is looking for an adventure story, I doubt if this covers it.

This book is enjoyable and at times profound. It is a nice introduction to the continent. My only wish is that the book had more pictures since I will never see the antarctic. I especially wish more pictures were taken of the exployers' huts.

This book was loaned to me by a friend who had not been able to get into it. I read it with knowledge that the author, now well into his seventies, had been missing for several weeks near some of the New Zealand sub-antarctic islands. It has now been several months, but having read the book I will not be at all surprised if the author turns up on the coast of Chile dressed in sealskins and carrying a notebook full of his wildlife observations!

This is an astonishing true story that has been written in a dispassionate, if somewhat unliterary style.

Jerry Clark was a truly adventurous spirit, and combines this with his amateur ornithology to circle the southern oceans in his hand-built yacht the Totorore. Setting out from New Zealand in 1983 the then 53 year old heads across the Southern Pacific and encounters furious storms, great waves and freezing cold.

Nearly two years later he returns. In between he introduces the reader to the spectacular beauty and solitute of the sub antartic, South America and the open oceans and islands between.

There is a great proportion of the writing given over to his journey's purpose, that is making and recording observations of birdlife including the great wandering albtross etc. Even if you have little interest in these matters they are somewhat enlightening and give context to the adventure.

There is more adventure here than many people will ever experience - the vessel is rolled on several seperate occassions, dis-masted, nursed under jury rig for months and nearly crushed by a disintegrating iceberg.

More than once the author does not expect to survive. Pages that are mostly a transcript of the ships log give an immediate feel to this.

There's bathing in hot pools on desolate antartic ice, volcanoes to climb and a camping trip on Cape Horn. The book has too few photographs but that may reflect the generally awful weather that prevails in those latitudes. Those that are there are sometimes unreal in their beauty and scale.

It is a somewhat diffucult but rewarding read.

Gerry Clark provides his diary of an adventure - somewhat foolhardy - in a home made boat from Kerikeri New Zealand to Antarctica via Chile, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. You can feel the Antarctic chills, smell the sea sickness and roll with the waves. They find a lot of Sooty Shearwater's and one gets tired of the somewhat repetitive diary entries - but I guess it captures the ennui of sailing.

His engine falters, his masts freeze, he hits the bottom and so it goes on. One wonders how he would have fared with a more consistent crew - he keeps picking up bird watching experts and others. I

This is a tragedy about a person who liked to take risks and has some beautiful pictures to show for it.

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The last few years has seen a spotlight put on Antarctica. We've had the success of all the recent Shackleton books, TV shows and IMAX films on the Frozen South. Is this the explanation for the current level of popularity of polar exploration history? My own fascination in all matters Antarctican stems from a boyhood spent in Hobart Tasmania. It was from this port that many ships head south; south of the Circle. I grew up with tales of Cook, Scott, and Mawson and their Antarctic adventures.

I bought Gurney's book on the strength of the title and the publisher's blurb. On the author's own acknowledgment in the Introduction it was the marketing and publicity department of his publisher who gave the book its title. We have to get through 100 pages of pre-amble before we get to the real subject of his book. Does detail on circumnavigation of Australia by Matthew Flinders in 1802 belong here? This story is better covered elsewhere. The first crossing of Australia on foot by John Eyre is another strange addition particularly when coupled with a parenthetic (and absurd) observation that modern travellers face certain death in this hostile environment if they get off their train in the middle of the Nullarbor Plain.

However, we do get the benefit of Gurney's encyclopedic knowledge, in all matters maritime. We learn that sailors called the weevils in their biscuits, bargemen. We get familiar with all the arcane terminology from the age of sailing ships. His use of extracts from the 1867 "Sailor's Word-Book" at the head of each chapter is a neat touch.

The notes at the end of each chapter add very little that could not otherwise be included in the text. They give a pseudo-academic touch, which is not warranted. Editing of the book is very sloppy, with many typos creeping through. Structurally the text contains many convolute passages and at times, repetitious detail.

His emphasis on the farcical Wilkes' expedition would have been better downplayed with more detail on the efforts of Ross and D'Urville. At no times does the sense of a "Race" really come through. Examining the timing and context of the voyages, it was coincidence that the English, French and Americans were on government expeditions at the same time.

By most people's reckoning, the most exciting phase of Antarctic exploration would have to be the race to the South Pole that took place in the first decade of the 20th Century. Gurney's book serves really only as a preliminary "backgrounder" for readers who wish to understand these later events. The most accessible and delightful encapsulation of Antarctic exploration is found in the 1940-1950's era "The Children's Encyclopedia" edited by Arthur Mee. It's worth digging out Volume 9 and reading "The South Pole Men."

Gurney's book would be a useful addition to the shelves of readers who like histories of scientific and naval exploration. However, many more authoritative and entertaining books on this subject are around.

The race to the white continent...voyages to the antarctic. Alan Gurney. Did like the read. Gurney was good with the James Clark Ross discovery of the magic of the Ross Sea and Mount Erebus. I had the pleasure to live there. With the Royal Society Range for a backdrop, Minna Bluff to the south. A view of a lifetime. Of the coming storms... Great touch on that. I thought a little boring is the take of the Wilkes Expedition. A British viewpoint anyway...I did think the Gurney spill on Dumont D' Urville's was a plus...A good read...Next up try "Barrow's Boys"...by Fergus Fleming. 5 stars...easy.

This is Alan Gurney's second book on Antarctic exploration. His first, "Below the Convergence," covered the early era of Antarctic voyaging, up to the beginning of the 19th century. This book starts with a look at Pacific and Australian explorations to set the scene and bridge the gap, then pulls in to focus on two great Antarctic expeditions of the 1840s, and a third that was less impressive. The great expeditions were the French Navy expedition led by Dumont d'Urville in the Astrolabe and Zelee and the classic Royal Navy explorations of James Clark Ross with HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. These two men and their crews of seamen and scientists were the first to begin to make Antarctica a real place, rather than a realm of conjecture, and the names of the ships, the men, and their families remain scattered around the Antarctic to this day, fastened to their discoveries - Adelie Land, the Ross Ice Shelf, Mt. Erebus, McMurdo Sound, to name only a few. Gurney ably tells the tales of these expeditions, from their inception to their return, and the sad fate of their leaders - d'Urville killed in a railway wreck with his wife and son, Ross dead before his time, probably of drink, after the early death of his wife and his unsuccessful search for the lost Franklin expedition in the Arctic. The third expedition is the US Navy expedition led by Lt. Charles Wilkes in USS Vincennes, and if anything Gurney is too kind to this somewhat fraught endeavor. Wilkes, who promptly promoted himself commodore and hoisted a distinguishing pennant as soon as he was out of reach of US Navy authority, treated both his officers and the scientists assigned to the expedition like dirt, discovered a vast amount of entirely imaginary territory, and was courtmartialed on his return (but unfortunately remained in the Navy to commit numerous stupidities during the Civil War). All in all, good reading for anyone interested in Antarctic exploration, and one wonders if Gurney will go for a trilogy with a third book about the Heroic Era of Antarctic exploration.

I have not read the book, but the booklist review says he was in danger of being eaten by polar bears. I sure hope he did not write that in the book! There are no bears in the southern hemisphere, bears evolved in the northern hemisphere. Somebody better check their review!

Polar masochism! This is sick. Why would anyone want to walk across a frozen desert the size of europe? To prove they can suffer? What is gained by freezing parts of ones body and then cutting them off? Who wants crotch rot, kidney stones, piles, and freezing cold misery? This is gruesome to the point of making me wonder if this man needs psychiatric help for self mutilation.

Much more fun are the people who do this (crossing Antarctica) using parachute (wind) pulled sleds, or even dog teams. But this book is something else. I get upset just looking at the pictures of the naked, emaciated author, close ups of necrotic tissue...YUK!

This is the account of his journey across Antartica - on foot, pulling sleds - with Michael Stroud. In it Ranulph describes, not only his journey, but insights into the human mind. It is supported by extracts from the diaries of both men, as well as extracts from books of previous Antartic explorers. Some people feel the need to push themselves to extremes, others (like me) like to read about them, and this is an intelligently written, honest and interesting book.
There are absolutely no bears mentioned in it, and it is a pity that one reviewer felt the need to give it one star without ever having read it.