"Shackleton's Dream: Fuchs, Hillary and the Crossing of Antarctica" by Stephen Haddelsey.
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"Shackleton's Dream: Fuchs, Hillary and the Crossing of Antarctica" by Stephen Haddelsey. My rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Kindle Edition, 639 pages.
Book description: In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton embarked on what he called 'The last great polar journey' - the crossing of Antarctica. His expedition ended in disaster, with the Endurance crushed and the frozen corpses of three explorers left on the Antarctic plateau. Forty years later Vivian Fuchs and Edmund Hillary, the hero of Everest, set out to succeed where Shackleton had failed. Despite the passage of four decades, the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955-58 encountered many of the obstacles that had so hindered Shackleton - a chronic shortage of funds, inadequate equipment and an early onset of pack-ice. Even more disastrously, it also suffered from a clash of personalities so sever that it came close to destroying the expedition from within.
i read my share of books about exploration, and I would put this one near the top of the list of such books I've experienced. Not only is it extraordinarily detailed, it focuses on the personalities of those involved, so it is far from just putting down the what and when details of history.
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"Shackleton's Dream: Fuchs, Hillary and the Crossing of Antarctica" by Stephen Haddelsey. My rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Kindle Edition, 639 pages.
Book description: In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton embarked on what he called 'The last great polar journey' - the crossing of Antarctica. His expedition ended in disaster, with the Endurance crushed and the frozen corpses of three explorers left on the Antarctic plateau. Forty years later Vivian Fuchs and Edmund Hillary, the hero of Everest, set out to succeed where Shackleton had failed. Despite the passage of four decades, the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955-58 encountered many of the obstacles that had so hindered Shackleton - a chronic shortage of funds, inadequate equipment and an early onset of pack-ice. Even more disastrously, it also suffered from a clash of personalities so sever that it came close to destroying the expedition from within.
i read my share of books about exploration, and I would put this one near the top of the list of such books I've experienced. Not only is it extraordinarily detailed, it focuses on the personalities of those involved, so it is far from just putting down the what and when details of history.
@ReadingTheDots @bookstodon It highlights how, even with modern advantages, polar expeditions remained vulnerable to the same human conflicts that plagued earlier explorers, suggesting personality clashes can be as dangerous as the environment itself.
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