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Reviews of The Endurance : Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander, Frank Hurley Photographer
Amazon.com
Melding superb research and the extraordinary expedition photography
of Frank Hurley, Endurance by Caroline Alexander is a stunning work of
history, adventure, and art that chronicles "one of the greatest epics
of
survival in the annals of exploration." Setting sail as World War I broke
out in Europe, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by renowned
polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, hoped to become the first to cross
the Antarctic continent. But their ship, Endurance, was trapped in the
drifting pack ice, eventually splintering and leaving the expedition
stranded on floes---a situation that seemed "not merely desperate but
impossible."
Most skillfully Alexander constructs the expedition's character through
its
personalities--the cast of veteran explorers, scientists, and crew--with
aid
from many previously unavailable journals and documents. We learn, for
instance, that carpenter and shipwright Henry McNish, or "Chippy," was
"neither sweet-tempered nor tolerant," and that Mrs. Chippy, his cat, was
"full of character." Such firsthand descriptions, paired with 170 of Frank
Hurley's intimate photographs (comprehensively assembled here for the
first time), penetrate the hulls of the Endurance and these tough men,
revealing the seldom-seen domestic world of expedition life--the
singsongs, feasts, lectures, and camaraderie--so that when the hardships
set in, we know these people beyond the stereotypical guise of mere
explorers and long for their safety.
Alexander reveals Shackleton to be an inspiring optimist, "a leader who
put his men first." Throughout the grueling ordeal, Shackleton and his
men
show what endurance and greatness are all about. Endurance is an
intimate portrait of an expedition and of survival. Readers will possess
a
newfound respect for these daring souls and know better their
unthinkable toil and half-forgotten realm of glory. --Byron Ricks
From Booklist , October 15, 1998
A glorious failure, Ernest Shackleton's attempt to become the first
transcontinental trekker of Antarctica turned into one of the all-time
survival stories in the annals of adventure. Shackleton, an imperturbable
leader, was also a savvy promoter who before embarking sold publishing
rights and signed on a skilled photographer. Unfortunately for commercial
aspirations, World War I deadened contemporary interest in
Shackleton's story of being marooned on ice floes and islands for two
years. But with the distance of time and an excellent narrator in
Alexander, the epic achieves its stature. It developed after Shackleton,
who came within 100 miles of being the first man to reach the South Pole
in 1909, organized his new quest for glory. Instead of landing as planned,
his ship Endurance became icebound in the Weddell Sea; the
photographs of that predicament depict a beautiful tragedy--the ship, a
doomed maiden, slowly crushed and sunk by the ice. Thus began the
precarious retreat to civilization, which Alexander extols, citing the
fortitude, resourcefulness, and luck of the crew, highlighted by
Shackleton's 800-mile voyage to South Georgia, crossing the world's
stormiest seas in an open lifeboat. An exhilarating retelling of a most
popular saga in polar exploration. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright© 1998, American Library Association. All rights reserved
From Kirkus Reviews , October 1, 1998
The saga of the Endurance and her crewShackleton's Antarctic fiasco
turned heroic melodramais discovered anew through the expeditions
previously unpublished photos and Alexander's (The Way to Xanadu,
1994, etc.) well-turned storytelling. The Heroic Age was coming to a
close when Sir Ernest Shackleton took off in pursuit of one of
exploration's last prizes: the crossing on foot of the Antarctic continent.
But his boat never made its intended southernmost harbor. Instead, it got
stuck in ice in the Weddell Sea, abode of 200-mile-per-hour winds and
100-degree-below-zero temperatures. Thus began two years of chilly
misfortune, met by the crew's perseverance, and conveyed by Alexander
in an elegant, subdued manner: The eerie portents of the ice close ever
tighter around the Endurance, the helpless, hopeless, endless days follow
one another on the ice pack, and finally Shackleton makes an outrageous
bid to reach South Georgia Island, 900 miles distant, in one of the
abandoned mother ship's small boatsthrough a hurricane, no less.
Accompanying the expedition, luckily, was photographer James Hurley,
who was to chronicle the exploit visually both for scientific purposes
and
entertainment value. His images, which miraculously survived the ordeal,
give the story an added palpability in time and space. Many of the
photographs are not only quite beautiful, particularly of the Endurance
as
it sits icebound yet under desperate full sail, but also moving, with crew
members putting on their best faces as death sat waiting just outside the
picture frame. Published in conjunction with an exhibition about the
expedition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York
City, this book occupies a prize spot in the already abundant literature
of
polar exploration. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All
rights reserved.
Book Description of The Endurance : Shackleton's Legendary
Antarctic Expedition by
Caroline Alexander, Frank Hurley Photographer.
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.
Synopsis of The Endurance : Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic
Expedition by Caroline
Alexander, Frank Hurley Photographer.
Drawing on previously unavailable sources, this riveting account of Sir
Ernest Shackleton's 1914 expedition to Antarctica presents, for the first
time, 150 images by Australian photographer Frank Hurley, whose
stunning visual record of the ordeal was--amazingly--preserved.
"National Geographic" feature.
From the Back Cover of The Endurance : Shackleton's Legendary
Antarctic Expedition
by Caroline Alexander, Frank Hurley Photographer.
"What makes this book especially exciting are the 170 previously
unpublished photos by the expedition's photographer, Frank Hurley:
stark, artfully composed tributes to the savage beauty of the ice and to
the fortitude of the men and their dogs. As Alexander makes clear in her
gripping, emotional resonant book, this incredible fact bears witness not
only to Shackleton's leadership but to the strength of the human
spirit."---Publishers Weekly
The author, Caroline Alexander , December 18, 1998
This is the greatest adventure story ever told.
I fell into Shackleton's story like Alice falling down the rabbit hole,
and
I've never come up for air. This expedition has that effect on people --
it
derails lives, makes converts; one doesn't just read this story and move
on. It is a saga of almost unimaginable physical endurance, of course,
but
also a wholly unimaginable saga of survival of character. No one of the
28 men involved seems to have come out a lesser person than when he
embarked upon the expedition, no one was brutalized by this experience.
During the long months in the dying ship Endurance, camping as
castaways on the ice, in the two great open boat journeys, the nearly five
months on bleak Elephant Island the men seemed to have remained true
to who they were. There was tension, friction, aggrevation, of course,
but
no one broke down and assaulted or turned on his fellow, or let the
extraordinary privation debase him. I became interested in Mrs. Chippy
in great part because the affection with which the men held their feline
shipmate, and the fact that they contined to remember (and mourn) "her"
years after was a clue to me that, although these men had endured an
ordeal by fire -- or ice, in this case -- they had not become hardened.
This is the element of this story that I believe could not be replicated
again. In recent memory, one bad night on Everest resulted in endless
recrimination. As we leave this century, which has shaped and nurtured
all of us, our parents and our grand-parents, it will do us well to
remember that the story of the Endurance may represent our finest hour.
About the Author of The Endurance : Shackleton's Legendary
Antarctic Expedition,
Caroline Alexander
Caroline Alexander has written for The New Yorker, Granta, Condé
Nast Traveler, Smithsonian, Outside, and National Geographic,
and is the author of four previous books. She is the curator of
"Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Expedition," an exhibition that will
open at the American Museum of Natural History in March 1999. She
lives on a farm in New Hampshire.
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