The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

NATIONAL BEST SELLER - A riveting account of Shackleton's famed Antarctic expedition, recounting one of the last great adventures in the Heroic Age of exploration--perhaps the greatest of them all--the shipwreck that stranded the crew for twenty months. Including never-before published photographs.

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 in their ship, Endurance, 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 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 an enthralling account of Endurance and 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.

Author: Caroline Alexander
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 11/03/1998
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.07lbs
Size: 9.28h x 8.52w x 0.82d
ISBN: 9780375404030

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 8.6
Point Value: 11
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 34754 / Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition


Award: Alex Awards - Winner


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 07/01/1998 pg. 70
Publishers Weekly 10/05/1998 pg. 63
Kirkus Reviews 10/01/1998 pg. 1423
Booklist 10/15/1998 pg. 389
New York Times 12/27/1998 pg. 10
Booklist Ed Choice Adu Bk YA's 01/01/1999 pg. 780
Library Journal 10/15/1998 pg. 81
Booklist 04/01/1999 pg. 1400
Booklist 09/15/1999 pg. 224
Publishers Weekly Best Books 01/01/1998 pg. 44
ALA Best Books Young Adults 01/01/2000 pg. 1339
Booklist 04/01/2001 pg. 1455
Booklist 03/01/2002 pg. 1085
Library Journal 07/01/1998
Harvard Business Review 03/01/2010 pg. 128

About the Author
Caroline Alexander has written for The New Yorker, Granta, Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian, Outside, and National Geographic, and is the author of four previous books. She is the curator of "Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Expedition," an exhibition that will open at the American Museum of Natural History in March 1999. She lives on a farm in New Hampshire.