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

4.0

I picked up this book by accident, thinking it was the Alfred Lansing account. I ended up reading them both, and am glad I had this version, from the Nat'l History Museum, to supplement the other. About a third of it is pictures, and they are amazing. The other, more famous book has only 4 or 5 slides. The text is very similar, with the Lansing version being a little bit more readable. An interesting tidbit I got from my chance reading of this book is that one of the famous pictures from the ordeal, called 'The Rescue,' (showing a boat approaching the island where the men were marooned, the men's arms raised in cheers, victory) was actually the complete opposite scenario, 'The Departure.' It was the men seeing off Shackleton in his valiant attempt to cross 850 miles of open ocean in essentially a big rowboat to reach a less remote island. The photographer thought he needed a more climactic picture of their rescue. But the author made a good point about the truth being much more compelling than the fiction. Here these men are, after about a year and a half of enduring the harshest environment on our planet, knowing that not a soul on the earth knows where they are, and how all their hopes of survival rest on this little dingy, practically a suicide mission, and they are still able to raise their fists in a sailors' cheer. It's bravery in the face of such desperation and resignation.