Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
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Book Reviews of Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
Book Review: A Cracking Good Story
Summary: 5 Stars
The first I had ever heard of Sir Ernest Shackleton was on a PBS special a few years ago. The special dealt with the Endurance voyage and prompted me to find out more.
What an adventure! What a story! What a book! Lansing's book reads like a suspense novel -- a page turner of high quality. His reliance upon the personal journals of the men provide such a wonderful flavor to a story that is, in its own right, nothing short of unbelievable. He pays attention to detail, but just enough to keep the pace of the story just right. He provides concentrated character portraits that enhance the story rather than tax the reader's attention.
This is an adventure of the first degree -- survival against all odds, human endurance on a level never before seen. It is hard to believe that this actually happened. It is equally interesting that this voyage comes at a time when a romantic age of daring and adventure was giving way to the madness of the First World War. A handful of men proved that leadership, sacrifice, diligence and will can overcome incredible circumstances. If only their leaders, a world away, could have learned from their experiences.
Book Review: The suspense builds and builds
Summary: 5 Stars
The suspense is real - it is cold as ice - and it builds and builds, in Lansing's superb retelling, until the final climax. Many Amazon.com readers will realize that Lansing's tale is actually a fairly old book right now. It was written after World War II when many of the members of the expedition (but not Shackleton) were still alive and could be interviewed. This book is their story as much as that of the author, Lansing.
In their stories we see a bunch of men from the Edwardian British Isles - one of the most class-ridden societies the world has ever seen - learn to work together. These men were not perfect. Every reader will find someone in the "Endurance" whom he or she will identify with. Whatever their flaws, they were able to accomplish the impossible.
Most people who read this review will know how the story ends, so I am not giving anything away when I say that it is just as much a triumph of the human spirit as it was when it was first told, decades ago. Today Lansing's book is both a classic and a best seller, a tribute to the fact that we need stories like these, and are not ashamed to admit the fact that we need them.
Book Review: Unique: peerless adventure story and management guide
Summary: 5 Stars
Lansing's tale will grab you and never let go, as it did for me 25 years ago in my first reading and every re-reading since. While other accounts of this heroic journey are also compelling, Lansing's version is easily the best. Beyond the gripping descriptions of incessant danger and threats to the human psyche, Lansing lays out the foundation for a Shackleton theory of management: Prepare for contingencies and then prepare again; Value attitude over technical competence in selecting people for work; Emphasize role over rank (the CEO takes the soggiest sleeping bag); Don't be afraid to do nothing, for you can lose your head (and those of your crew) by forcing action to conquer boredom; And (shades of Apollo 13) Failure is not an option.
This book alone was enough to launch a decades-long fascination with Shackleton. This book alone inspired me to travel 2,700 miles from Boise to New York just to see the fabulous Endurance exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. For anyone with an interest in survival sagas, psychology, or management theory and practice, this book should be in anyone's top ten.
Book Review: Unique: peerless adventure story and management guide
Summary: 5 Stars
Lansing's tale will grab you and never let go, as it did for me 25 years ago in my first reading and every re-reading since. While other accounts of this heroic journey are also compelling, Lansing's version is easily the best. Beyond the gripping descriptions of incessant danger and threats to the human psyche, Lansing lays out the foundation for a Shackleton theory of management: Prepare for contingencies and then prepare again; Value attitude over technical competence in selecting people for work; Emphasize role over rank (the CEO takes the soggiest sleeping bag); Don't be afraid to do nothing, for you can lose your head (and those of your crew) by forcing action to conquer boredom; And (shades of Apollo 13) Failure is not an option.
This book alone was enough to launch a decades-long fascination with Shackleton. This book alone inspired me to travel 2,700 miles from Boise to New York just to see the fabulous Endurance exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. For anyone with an interest in survival sagas, psychology, or management theory and practice, this book should be in anyone's top ten.
Book Review: Still going strong, almost five decades later
Summary: 5 Stars
There's not much to add to the almost 400 reviews preceding-other than another five stars.
Working almost exclusively with a palette of black, white, gray and blue, Lansing manages to craft a vivid account of the Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition of 1914. As others have mentioned, this story, as interpreted by Lansing, is so engrossing you won't want to put the book down. (Even after a second or third time!) It's also an interesting perspective on leadership under the most dismal conditions that can be imagined.
A tidbit from one of the one star reviews that deserves mention: there was more than one publisher for the paperback versions of this book; Carroll & Graf, and Tyndale. As I understand, the Carroll & Graf edition contains the familiar secular foreword followed by Lansing's original text. The Tyndale edition has a Christian themed foreword from James C. Dobson, followed by Lansing's text edited for a Christian audience. IF this bothers you, make sure you're getting the Carroll & Graf version! (Thanks, Joel Abrams, for that information.)