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Summary: A tale of survival & adventure......every five pages
Review: After turning over the last leaf of Lansing's riveting account, I was compelled to drop everything I was doing and get on a ship headed to South Georgia, where I humbly paid my respects at Sir Ernest Shackleton's idyllic resting place right on the shores of Grytviken Harbor. This remote island figures prominently in a story that gives revitalized meaning to words like "adventure", "hardship", "soul", and of course "endurance". From the book's very first proclamation ("The story you are about to read is true") to its final implication ("These were men!"), Lansing engages the reader with successively awe-inspiring and head-shaking tales, anecdotes and journal quotes. Lansing's narrative is also more engaging than personal accounts written by the protagonists themselves (Shackleton's "South" and Worsley's "Shackleton's Boat Journey") because their very acts of heroism are modestly downplayed in the first person. Lansing holds nothing back in his respectful tribute. The only drawback is a lack of illustrations and maps on the original hardcover version.
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Summary: Thank God for Armchair Adventuring...
Review: ...because I would still be thawing out from Shackleton's wild romp in the Antarctic. And a few years have passed since their adventure and those fateful seventeen months in 1914-16 when Shackleton and his men encountered the worst Murphy's Law could throw their way. The book is a testament to human endurance, to Lansing's writing, and the leadership of a man like Ernest Shackleton. It is an enjoyable read from front to back, from launch to recovery, from freezing to thawing.As far as adventure/disaster books go, I would rank it behind Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air." Though the author Lansing does an incredible job placing the reader "there" with Shackleton's men as they get their ship stuck in the ice pack in the Weddell Sea, float on ice floes, launch across treacherous seas in lifeboats, and go where no man has gone before on a last ditch desperate land jaunt, the fact doesn't change that Lansing, himself, wasn't there. I think no matter how hard an author can apply his trade to a story, it is difficult to relay to the reader the immediacy of impending doom and the cold and dread and the spirit that drives men to survival. Don't get me wrong, Lansing does a fine job bringing off this task, but it is short of the immediacy Krakauer gives the reader of putting you "there" in the desperate situation and knowing what it is like to survive from the worst nature and man has to offer. If you want to read the best in adventure/disaster writing start skip by Junger's somewhat thrill-lacking "The Perfect Storm," and head straight for "Into Thin Air," followed by Lansing's "Endurance." Be warned though, you will be losing out on some sleep in the process since these books absolutely prove impossible to put down. Stoke the fire, turn the thermostat up, because you will be chilled to the bone and will probably have nightmares of Sea Lions chasing you across ice floes once you finish the book and finally get some sleep.
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Summary: Gripping, harrowing, triumphant
Review: The story of the ill-fated 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, bent on glory, but ultimately humbled to the barest thread of survival. The Endurance becomes locked in an ice pack in the Weddell Sea, and is eventually crushed and sunk. The ship goes screaming into the icy deep. The men scurry for safety onto the surrounding ice. And that's just the beginning. I'm frankly surprised ANYONE survived this horrendous ordeal; if this were a novel, I'd say it's far-fetched. But it happened, and all hands survived. Imagine an acute scarcity of food, months on end in darkness, an interminable landscape of featureless whiteness, no sanitary facilities, and all through this you're cold and wet, and it's windy, and the temperature's below zero. You eat your sled dogs. You're nauseated from undercooked food. Your face and hands are frostbitten. You shiver even in your sleep. And no one knows you're marooned. Your only escape is to travel by open boat through the gale-wracked Drake Passage-the most treacherous body of water on Earth. Imagine your fingers are frozen numb, and yet you must chip off ice from the sail, and raise the sail, and tie the lines fast. Otherwise you'll sink and die. These men did the impossible-and they lived to tell about it.
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Summary: Endurance: a true life spectacle
Review: In simplest form, "Endurance" is about a group of men fighting against the elements to reach home. But the book is so much more than this. The book holds within its pages the wonder and magic of the real true-life adventures, as if they were told from a fellow sailor.
Alfred Lansing has the amazing literary power to bring to life one of the most stunning survivor stories in the history of the world.
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Summary: Fantastic!
Review: There is not much I can add to the other reviews, but I couldn't resist the urge to chime in. Even if you don't typically read this kind of book, I think anyone would find this an enjoyable read. I couldn't put it down and blew through it in five days, despite working a 60-70 hour week. I stayed up until 2am one night so that I could finish it, and then I couldn't go to sleep. The story is absolutely thrilling. It is a lesson in human endurance that one would be hard-pressed to find in the modern world.
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Summary: Deserves more than five stars!
Review: 308 reviews and I am adding another? Incredible. Yet I cannot resist. The is an account superlatively well-told of an impossible story which simply bowled me over. I could not stop reading it and read it in less than 24 hours. One's admiration for the super-human feats which Shackleton and his men performed and endured, capped by the events on South Georgia Island, make for a fantastically exciting and memorable read. I doubt I will read as good a book again this year. I can find nothing negative to say about this book and will look if there is anyone who gives this book less than five stars--after I post this.
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Summary: A classic
Review: I am not a lover of adventure stories, but could not put this book down. I think it has a lot of good moral lessons as well (teamwork, leadership, never leave a man down, etc.) I have passed it along to so many people that I am buying a new copy for myself.
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Summary: Puts all other polar books to shame
Review: Alfred Lansing's "Endurance" is quite simply the definitive version of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated 1914 expedition to Antarctica. He was supposed to lead the first people to cross the Antarctic continent, but his ship, the "Endurance," was trapped and crushed in the polar ice, leaving his group stranded and entirely on their own. It's quite possibly the greatest polar adventure story of all time. Based on numerous interviews and other meticulous forms of research, Lansing tells the story in great but not stupefying detail. He draws the reader in and makes you feel like you are actually standing on that ice floe with Shackleton, watching the ship disintegrate. He does a much better job of telling the story than Shackleton himself did in his book "South." Although there have been many retellings of the "Endurance" story, both on page and on film (most recently A&E's "Shackleton" dramatization), none are as compelling or as readable as Lansing's book. Check it out; you will be enthralled.
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Summary: The Greatest Adventure Story ever!!!
Review: Absolutely the greatest adventure and survival story ever told...and its all true. Alfred Lansing does a masterful job of telling this compelling tale of Ernest Shackeltons voyage to the Antarctic in 1914. The book reads like a page turning novel and you wont be able to put it down. I recall thinking after the first hundred pages.."well what can happen now because Shackelton and his crew are doomed". I couldnt understand how there could still be 200 pages of book left. But what a story, at every turn you cant wait to find out what happens next. After reading it i bought 3 more copies to give to friends! This book lives up to its billing....the greatest true adventure ever told!!!. Incredible!! Don't miss it!
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Summary: Shackleton's Incredable Voyage
Review: Shackleton's Voyage by Donald Barr Chidsey is the most dramatic tale of survival against all odds that I have read since Gary Paulsen's Hatchet. The thing that fascinated me most in this book was the fact that after Shackleton had failed on his first attempt to discover the South Pole, he proceeded to try again, some six years later, with a crew of 26, aboard the greatest ship of the time, the Endurance. It fascinated me because I couldn't understand why, after seeing the devastation and hardships that could, and would be faced, he would do it again. The best part of the story occurs in the last 30 pages or so, when Shackleton decides the only way they will ever make it out alive is by walking out of their own icy tomb. There's a quote in this section that I especially liked, where things finally turn around. It is the last paragraph, on page 161. "Why not? Somebody had to go and get help. The men might survive a winter on this highly inhospitable island, but with the coming of spring in September, they could not reasonably hope to be spotted and rescued by some stray whaler. So they would have to go and get their own help; and the person to do that, obviously, was Earnest Henry Shackleton. They were his boys weren't they?" I was mesmerized by this quote, because it shows that these explorers were finally taking things into their own hands. The theme of this story is that no matter how bad things are, you should never give up hope. The commitment to hope, to overcoming what seems impossible, is something that I feel very strongly about because it is a decision to always push forward, to go on with life, to not surrender. The only thing that these stranded men had left was hope, and with no safe shelter, inadequate clothing, nothing but pemmican to eat day after day, and sheer, unbearable boredom, hope was the only thing they had left. With things going so horribly, if they gave up hope, they might as well have given up their lives. This theme relates to me, being the eternal optimist that I am, because I hold hope close to my heart. As an optimist, and also an athlete and a person with a learning disability, I have found over and over again, that it is the belief that things can always be better that keeps you in the game of life. Without hope that belief would be gone. This is a book well worth the read. It is an exciting and intriguing adventure that introduces you to the early exploration of the Antarctic. It is an awesome adventure where 26 ordinary men battle the elements and themselves . I recommend this book so strongly because it's one that even if you're not an explorer you would like to imagine yourself as one.
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