Paperback, 304 pages
English language
Published May 4, 2000 by Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ).
Bound for Antarctica, where polar explorer Ernest Shackleton planned to cross on foot the last uncharted continent, the Endurance set sail from England, in August 1914. The ship became locked inside an island of ice, and was later crushed. This tale of survival by Shackleton and all 27 of his men for over a year on the ice-bound Antarctice seas defined heroism.
I could not put this book down - it read more like a fictional story then true life, and I'm now getting my son to read it also. We have so little to complain about in this day and age by comparison!
Most of those dudes seem like awful people, but wow oh wow could they SURVIVE. Great read, harrowing.
Most of those dudes seem like awful people, but wow oh wow could they SURVIVE. Great read, harrowing.
Every library, bookstore, and personal bookshelf in New Zealand contains books about Shackleton, so it was fun for me to finally learn the full story about his most famous expedition. Endurance is a story of leadership, resilience, and our innate desire to explore. Through a combination of interviews and journals, Lansing immerses you in the day-to-day life of the voyage. You hear about the crew's doubts, desires, gripes, and plans. The expedition was engaging from start to finish. Shackleton's personality was fascinating to read about.
Incredible.
So good!
The story itself was fascinating. Reading of how Shackleton and his men learned to cope with spending the winter adrift on the ice was intriguing.
This telling of the story, however, was not great. The attempts at building suspense fell flat. And, since the author wanted to present the historical facts as a struggle of man against nature, he tended to give a certain slant to things. The men of the expedition (most of them anyway) came out bigger and more noble than the norm. And nature tended to be portrayed as evil. The orcas were sinister, the seal leopards ugly, and the mountain ridges wicked. And I'm not sure how much trust I can put in the extrapolations that he made - where he described people's thoughts and motives.
Also, the edition that I read was released to be sold in Christian bookstores. So I couldn't escape the niggling …
The story itself was fascinating. Reading of how Shackleton and his men learned to cope with spending the winter adrift on the ice was intriguing.
This telling of the story, however, was not great. The attempts at building suspense fell flat. And, since the author wanted to present the historical facts as a struggle of man against nature, he tended to give a certain slant to things. The men of the expedition (most of them anyway) came out bigger and more noble than the norm. And nature tended to be portrayed as evil. The orcas were sinister, the seal leopards ugly, and the mountain ridges wicked. And I'm not sure how much trust I can put in the extrapolations that he made - where he described people's thoughts and motives.
Also, the edition that I read was released to be sold in Christian bookstores. So I couldn't escape the niggling suspicion that it had been re-edited to present a more 'Christian' viewpoint.
