The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition
by Caroline Alexander

The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

List Price: ~~$29.95~~
Our Price: $8.49
You Save: $21.46 (72%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.07 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Compare Prices for The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Caroline Alexander
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 1998-11-03
ISBN: 0375404031
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Knopf

Book Reviews of The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

Book Review: The Endurance book review
Summary: 4 Stars

Caroline Alexander's work of non-fiction The Endurance is a wonderful read, effectively portraying Shackleton's Antarctic expedition in an exciting and enjoyable manner. Alexander effectively uses the journals of the members of the expedition to demonstrate the feelings of the crewmen about their plight, their leader, and other members of the crew. One such example would be from the diary of Frank Worsley, the skipper of Endurance, describing crewmate Timothy McCarthy. "`He is the most irrepressible optimist I've ever met,' Worsley wrote in his navigating book,'" (Alexander 148). In addition, Alexander also demonstrates how optimism can lead to survival in situations in which the odds are heavily stacked against it. "`Optimism,' Shackleton once said, `is true moral courage'," (Alexander 56). Alexander's choice to include this Shackleton quote demonstrates how she believes that optimism is important in a time of crisis. The one aspect of the book that is mildly irritating, however, is the placement of the pictures. There are many pages of pictures placed at seemingly random intervals throughout the book, and this can cause quite some confusion due to the fact that the pictures often interrupt a sentence or a paragraph. However, overall The Endurance is a wonderful book about facing impossible odds and living to tell the tale.

Write your own review

All The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition Customer Reviews

Summary of The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

Melding superb research and the extraordinary expedition photography of Frank Hurley, The Endurance by Caroline Alexander is a stunning work of history, adventure, and art which 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 to splinter, 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, which are comprehensively assembled here for the first time, penetrate the hulls of the Endurance and these tough men. The account successfully reveals the seldom-seen domestic world of expedition life--the singsongs, feasts, lectures, 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 as 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. The Endurance is a most intimate portrait of an expedition and of survival. Readers will possess a newfound respect for these daring souls, know better their unthinkable toil and half-forgotten realm of glory. --Byron Ricks

Narrators Michael Tezla and Martin Ruben join forces to read Caroline Alexander's extraordinary account of Sir Ernest Shackleton's improbable Antarctic adventure. Tezla narrates the text while Ruben reads diary entries from the ship's crewmembers, employing a variety of native accents. The approach effectively divides the book into listener-friendly chunks, but at times, keeping track of all 27 crewmen requires the fortitude of the explorers themselves. Tezla describes the ice and snow with a haunting beauty but manages maintain the tension throughout, while Ruben injects character and humor into his various vocal interpretations. (Running time: 6 hours, 4 cassettes) --Kimberly Heinrichs

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.

Irish Books

Book Subjects

Most talked about in CTY list 2005 biography/non-fiction

This Boy's Life: A Memoir
by Tobias Wolff
Grove Press; Published: 2000-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops: ~~$14.95~~

One Writer's Beginnings (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization)
by Eudora Welty
Harvard University Press; Published: 1998-07-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.72
Price in other shops: ~~$13.50~~

Black, White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self
by Rebecca Walker
Riverhead Trade; Published: 2002-01-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.64
Price in other shops: ~~$15.00~~

Meatless Days
by Sara Suleri
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1991-06-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.98
Price in other shops: ~~$14.00~~

I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala
by Rigoberta Menchu
Verso; Published: 1987-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops: ~~$20.00~~

The Sound Of Wings: The Life Of Amelia Earhart
by Mary S. Lovell
St. Martin's Griffin; Published: 1991-02-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $34.99

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
by Jon Krakauer
Anchor; Published: 1999-10-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.94
Price in other shops: ~~$14.95~~

Space: A Memoir
by Jesse Lee Kercheval
Algonquin Books; Published: 1998-01-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.90
Price in other shops: ~~$18.95~~

Lakota Woman
by Mary Crow Dog
Harper Perennial; Published: 1991-05-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.98
Price in other shops: ~~$13.95~~

An American Childhood
by Annie Dillard
Harper Perennial; Published: 1988-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops: ~~$14.00~~

Similar Books and other products

Truman
by David McCullough
Simon & Schuster; Published: 1993-06-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.10
Price in other shops: ~~$22.00~~

The Bounty : The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
by Caroline Alexander
Published: 2003-09-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.87
Price in other shops: ~~$27.95~~

Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure (Large Format)
Release date: 2002-09-03; DVD
Best price: $12.54
Price in other shops: ~~$19.99~~

Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer
by Margot Morrell, Stephanie Capparell
Published: 2001-01-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.58
Price in other shops: ~~$24.95~~

South: The Last Antarctic Expedition of Shackleton and the Endurance (The Explorers Club Classic)
by Sir Ernest Shackleton
The Lyons Press; Published: 2008-06-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.73
Price in other shops: ~~$19.95~~

Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure
by Frank Arthur Worsley, F.A. Worsley, Patrick O'Brian
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2000-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.74
Price in other shops: ~~$13.95~~

Leading at the Edge : Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition
by Dennis N. T. Perkins, Margaret P. Holtman, Paul R. Kessler
AMACOM; Published: 2000-05-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.36
Price in other shops: ~~$24.95~~

Shackleton - The Greatest Survival Story of All Time (3-Disc Collector's Edition)
Release date: 2002-04-09; DVD
Best price: $10.00
Price in other shops: ~~$19.95~~

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
by Alfred Lansing
Published: 1999-02-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.26
Price in other shops: ~~$13.95~~

The Endurance - Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition
Sony; Release date: 2003-09-02; DVD
Best price: $12.80
Price in other shops: ~~$19.94~~