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Title: Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure by Richard Evelyn Byrd, Richard E. Harrison, Kieran Mulvaney ISBN: 1-55963-463-4 Publisher: Shearwater Books Pub. Date: May, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Alone
Comment: Richard E. Byrd's "ALONE" gets off to a slow start, but as soon as Byrd is left alone, 123 miles from the nearest humans at Little America, during the Antarctic winter, the real drama begins. In 1934, long before science ascertained the real effects of constant darkness on the human psyche, Byrd, in this autobiographical expose, makes it very clear how the lack of sunlight, isolation, and carbon monoxide poisoning can push a man to his utmost mental and physical limits. To top it off, Byrd has a writing style so descriptive and soulful that it makes the reader feel as if he were right there with him as an invisible observer. Anyone who likes to explore the dormant, but always present, dark recesses of the human mind has to read this book. As a result, Byrd unintentionally takes us also on an exploration of the mind, not just the brutal conditions of the Antarctic. Great book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Stunning!
Comment: If you are looking for a book on an Antarctic adventure, perhaps there are better choices to be made. But if you want to understand the struggle and hardship of being physically and mentally isolated, or experience the terror of dealing with an unknown adversary, then I can recommend no better book than this one. Byrd takes what could have been an extremely dry subject and makes it read like a classic adventure novel. And it's all the more exciting because it's true!
Rating: 1
Summary: "Alone" with his ego
Comment: The mettle and grace of the Victorian gentleman: Robert Falcon Scott, on his 1911/12 polar trek, endured incredible hardship, crushing disappointment, and approaching death -- and wrote it all down in a journal as inspiring as it is heartbreaking. In "Alone", a much better-equipped Admiral Richard E. Byrd suffers similar travails a quarter-century later, and offers up a mundane narrative of egotism, complaint and self-justification.
That Antarctic exploration has undergone a sea change since the days of Scott and Shackleton becomes apparent as Admiral Byrd faces his first crisis: the loss of "two indispensable items": his alarm clock and cookbook. Not even instructions radioed in from Oscar of the Waldorf himself can salvage flapjacks made without that cookbook. Byrd plods along, making mistakes the average boy scout would avoid, such as wandering off and getting lost. And we are left to wonder why he had not learned Morse code, his only means of communication.
The details of daily life are interesting. And the awful, majestic beauty of the Antarctic night shines through it all, despite the half-baked psychoanalysis and philosophy which Byrd ladles over everything. ("The past was gone, and the future would adduce its own appropriate liquidation", he sums up at one point.) But he fails to inspire, to ennoble, to evoke all mankind. It is all about him.
Antarctica has been blessed with chroniclers of encompassing vision, poetic insight, and literary ability. Admiral Byrd is not one of them. Read "Scott's Last Expedition" instead.
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Title: Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing ISBN: 078670621X Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Slavomir Rawicz ISBN: 1558216847 Publisher: The Lyons Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard ISBN: 0786704373 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: April, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Farthest North by FRIDJTOF NANSEN, ROLAND HUNTFORD ISBN: 0375754725 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 17 August, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The South Pole by Roald E. Amundsen, Roland Huntford, Captain Roald Amundsen ISBN: 0815411278 Publisher: Cooper Square Press Pub. Date: January, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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