Book Review: Endurance

This is an amazing and true accounting of the 1914 Antarctic expedition gone awry.  For nearly two years, in conditions of constant zero and below cold, freezing wet, and often hunger, Ernest Shackleton kept all 27 men who sailed with him on the Endurance alive to eventually return to the England they left on the verge of World War I. Shakleton's leadership style and devotion to his men is fascinating.

It is clear that the author, Alfred Lansing, did an incredible amount of research, and though this book doesn't read like a novel, its presentation is powerful, giving a panoramic view of the whole terrible and desperate situation of these men.  Lansing dedicated the book "In appreciation for whatever it is that makes men accomplish the impossible." He wisely and without flourish often lets the men's own words -- through the journals that many of them kept at the time and in interviews forty years later -- tell their extraordinary story, each stage of which reads more harrowing than the last.