Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic

by Alfred Lansing | Biographies & Memoirs | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0753809877 Global Overview for this book
Registered by IpswichIzzy of Ipswich, Suffolk United Kingdom on 2/22/2011
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by IpswichIzzy from Ipswich, Suffolk United Kingdom on Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Found, unregistered, in Cafe Nero.

Amazon.co.uk Review
When Alfred Lansing's Endurance was first published in 1959, few people in this country--or anywhere else for that matter--had heard of Shackleton or the Imperial Transantarctic Expedition of 1914. Britain's polar history had been rewritten with Shackleton airbrushed out and Captain Scott taking centre stage as the archetypal English hero who died on the Great Barrier on his long haul back from the South Pole.

If Scott's deification was almost instantaneous, Shackleton's descent into obscurity was more of a slow fade than a sudden death. He achieved a certain amount of acclaim when South, his own account of the Expedition, was published, but his legend seemed to die with him when he suffered a fatal heart attack on another trip south in 1922. His memory deserved much better. Not only was he a far better explorer than Scott, both in terms of his technical and man management capabilities, but the story of the Transantarctic expedition read like an epic out of a Boys Own annual. With his boat crushed, he led his men across the pack-ice, sailed them in open boats to Elephant Island. Once he realised there was no chance of rescue, he and four crew mates sailed a further 600 miles across the southern ocean to South Georgia where they were shipwrecked. The five men then made the first crossing of the island to reach the whaling station at Stromness. Three attempts and three and a half months later, Shackleton returned to Elephant Island to pick up the remaining men. Not a single member of either party was lost.

So we have Lansing to largely thank for Shackleton's rehabilitation. But herein lies the problem. Shackleton's story has been now been so well told both in books--especially Roland Huntford's definitive biography, and in film and TV, that even though Lansing's thrilling account, making liberal use of the diaries of several expedition members, was the first to be published it now feels all terribly familiar and adds nothing to what we already know. Even Frank Hurley's exquisite photographs which illustrate the book now engender a slight feeling of déjà vu--not least because they have already been better reproduced in a single volume published by Bloomsbury. But Lansing deserves his day in the snow and no polar library would be complete without this book. And if, by any chance, you've never previously read a word about Shackleton, this is as good a place as any to start

Journal Entry 2 by IpswichIzzy at Caffe Nero IP1 Bookcrossing Zone in Ipswich, Suffolk United Kingdom on Saturday, September 17, 2011

Released 12 yrs ago (9/17/2011 UTC) at Caffe Nero IP1 Bookcrossing Zone in Ipswich, Suffolk United Kingdom

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Local BookCrossers meet, from noon on the second Saturday of every month, at Coffee Link, on Neptune Quay. Why not come along and join us? We're easy to spot - we're the people sitting round a table covered in books!

Journal Entry 3 by lellie at Ipswich, Suffolk United Kingdom on Thursday, October 6, 2011
Went into Caffe Nero for a cuppa and picked this up for my husband who enjoys this kind of thing.

I'll release it when he has read it although it may be some time.

Journal Entry 4 by lellie at Trimley St Mary, Suffolk United Kingdom on Friday, February 14, 2014
Still on his shelf, I may spirit it away for release ;)

Journal Entry 5 by lellie at Telephone Box Library in Kexby, Lincolnshire United Kingdom on Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Released 1 yr ago (5/26/2022 UTC) at Telephone Box Library in Kexby, Lincolnshire United Kingdom

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