Steve (retired Bookseller) comment after reading...
This is not a dull non-fiction book, I was captivated. Ranulph Feinnes, polar adventurer is a master storyteller who understands & captured the organisational, fund raising problems that polar travel require, allowing him to write vividly & with empathy the hell that these men went though.
This was the era that little was known about preparing for the Antarctic - scurvy, calorie deflicit was not widely recognised, whether to use dogs, ponies, motor vechicle or just manpower to pull sledges was being debated & trialled.
Currently we have Billionaires racing to get to space first, when just over 100 years ago explorer's were rushing to be the first to the north & south poles - with very basic equipment, no communications they had to survive in the harshest of conditions on their own - a must read.
The enthralling life, endurance and incredible leadership of Sir Ernest Shackleton, told by the world's greatest living explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes.
To write about Hell, it helps if you have been there. In 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt to traverse the Antarctic was cut short when his ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice. What followed became legend. Throughout the long, dark Antarctic winter, Shackleton fights for his life and the lives of his men - enduring freezing temperatures, a perilous lifeboat journey through the ice-strewn sea, and a punishing march across the South Georgia glaciers to seek the one slim chance they have of rescue.
Their situation is disastrous. Their survival would become history's most enthralling adventure. Yet Shackleton's critics have argued that the expedition was always doomed to fail. And that had Endurance not been destroyed by ice, his men would have suffered a slow and horrible death before completing their journey.
No previous biographer has experienced even a tiny taste of the polar hell on earth endured by Shackleton and his men. That cannot be said of Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who has been described as 'our greatest living explorer'.
From Shackleton's pursuit of adventure as a young merchant seaman, through his rivalry with Captain Scott, culminating in the two remarkable expeditions to Antarctica that revealed his unrivalled leadership and personal courage under the most extreme of circumstances, Fiennes brings the story vividly and viscerally to life, his own near-death on the ice, fifty years after his subject's death, providing the necessary proof to silence Shackleton's critics once and for all.
Biography
Paperback
Ranulph Fiennes
416 pages
H: 198mm W: 129mm Spine: 25mm
Weight: 311 grams