Creator: et al
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2001-06-14
Dewey code: 796.5220954914
RRP: £23.49
Price: £17.13
Review High: Stories of Survival from Everest and K2 (Extreme Adventure) / Listen & Live Audio:
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 1996-03
Price: £5.99
Review Beyond the Darkness: My Near Death Journey to the Edge of Hell and Back / Bantam USA:
Publication date: 1998-09-24
Dewey code: 796
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.25
Review South: A Memoir of the "Endurance" Voyage / Robinson Publishing:
Creator: David E. Davis
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 1996-11-04
Dewey code: 863
Price: £28.00
Review Steps Under Water: A Novel / University of California Press:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2003-07-03
Dewey code: 796
RRP: £6.99
Price: £0.48
Review Fire Trap: A Deadly Fire and the Men Who Fought It / Time Warner Paperbacks:
Creator: William Hootkins
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2000-05-02
Dewey code: 796
Price: £10.99
Review In the Heart of the Sea: The Epic True Story That Inspired "Moby Dick" / HarperCollins Audio:The appeal of Dava Sobel's Longitude was that it illuminated a little-known piece of history through a series of captivating incidents and engaging personalities. Nathaniel Philbrick's In The Heart of the Sea certainly covers the same area, by examining the 19th-century Pacific whaling industry through the arc of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a boisterous sperm whale. The story which inspired Herman Melville's classic, Moby Dick, has a lot going for it-derring-do, cannibalism, rescue-and Philbrick proves an amiable and well-informed narrator, providing both context and detail. We learn about the importance and mechanics of blubber production-a vital source of oil-and we get the nuts and bolts of harpooning and life onboard whalers. Neither are we spared the nitty gritty of the open boats and sucking human bones dry. By sticking to the tried and tested Longitude formula, Philbrick has missed a slight trick or two. The epicentre of the whaling industry was Nantucket, a small island off Cape Cod; most of the whales were in the Pacific, a huge journey around the southernmost tip of America. We never learn the reason for this distance and why no one ever tried to create an alternative whaling capital somewhere nearer. Similarly, Philbrick tells us that the story of the Essex was well known to Americans for decades but he never explores how such legends fade from our consciousness. Philbrick would no doubt reply that such questions were beyond his remit and you can't exactly accuse him of skimping on his research; 50 pages of footnotes is impressive by any standards and to give him his credit he wears his learning light. [+]Unlike many academics, he doesn't get bogged down in turgid detail and the narrative rattles along at a nice pace. And when the story line is as good as this, you can't really ask for more. -John Crace.
Publication date: 1994-04-01
Review Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows / Buccaneer Books Inc:
Publication date: 2004-09-10
RRP: £6.50
Price: £8.49
Review More Than I Deserved / Reading Room Publishing Limited:
Publication date: 2006-11-20
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £12.95
Price: £3.15
Review The Winter Walk / Alaska Northwest Books,U.S.:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1999-09-30
RRP: £6.99
Price: £1.98
Review Sailing Alone Around the World / Adlard Coles Nautical:
Publication date: 2001-12-01
Dewey code: 910
RRP: £13.50
Price: £7.68
Review The Cockpit: A Flight of Escape and Discovery / ebrandedbooks.com,US:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2001-06-21
Dewey code: 796
RRP: £12.99
Price: £12.70
Review Endurance: An Illustrated Account of Shackleton's Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic / Weidenfeld & Nicolson:When Alfred Lansing's Endurance was first published in 1959, few people in this country-or anywhere else for that matter-had heard of Shackleton or the Imperial Transantarctic Expedition of 1914. Britain's polar history had been rewritten with Shackleton airbrushed out and Captain Scott taking centre stage as the archetypal English hero who died on the Great Barrier on his long haul back from the South Pole. If Scott's deification was almost instantaneous, Shackleton's descent into obscurity was more of a slow fade than a sudden death. He achieved a certain amount of acclaim when South, his own account of the Expedition, was published, but his legend seemed to die with him when he suffered a fatal heart attack on another trip south in 1922. His memory deserved much better. Not only was he a far better explorer than Scott, both in terms of his technical and man management capabilities, but the story of the Transantarctic expedition read like an epic out of a Boys Own annual. With his boat crushed, he led his men across the pack-ice, sailed them in open boats to Elephant Island. Once he realised there was no chance of rescue, he and four crew mates sailed a further 600 miles across the southern ocean to South Georgia where they were shipwrecked. The five men then made the first crossing of the island to reach the whaling station at Stromness. Three attempts and three and a half months later, Shackleton returned to Elephant Island to pick up the remaining men. [+]Not a single member of either party was lost. So we have Lansing to largely thank for Shackleton's rehabilitation. But herein lies the problem. Shackleton's story has been now been so well told both in books-especially Roland Huntford's definitive biography, and in film and TV, that even though Lansing's thrilling account, making liberal use of the diaries of several expedition members, was the first to be published it now feels all terribly familiar and adds nothing to what we already know. Even Frank Hurley's exquisite photographs which illustrate the book now engender a slight feeling of déjà vu-not least because they have already been better reproduced in a single volume published by Bloomsbury. But Lansing deserves his day in the snow and no polar library would be complete without this book. And if, by any chance, you've never previously read a word about Shackleton, this is as good a place as any to start. -John Crace.
Publication date: 2006-01-24
Dewey code: 940.5318092
RRP: £14.95
Price: £9.86
Review Through Blood and Tears: Surviving Hitler and Stalin (Library of Holocaust Testimonies) / Vallentine Mitchell & Co Ltd:
Publication date: 2005-08-22
RRP: £19.00
Price: £12.53
Review Oar-some: The World's First Four-Man Crew Ever to Row Any Ocean / Oar4Won:
Authors
- Elizabeth Brenchley
- Fred Brenchley
Dewey code: 900
Price: £14.99
Review Stoker's Submarine / HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd:
Publication date: 1997-06-06
Price: £9.99
Review Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Everest Disaster / Macmillan:Into Thin Air is a riveting first-hand account of a catastrophic expedition up Mount Everest. In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall. Despite the expertise of Hall and the other leaders, by the end of summit day eight people were dead. Krakauer's book is at once the story of the ill-fated adventure and an analysis of the factors leading up to its tragic end. Written within months of the events it chronicles, Into Thin Air clearly evokes the majestic Everest landscape. As the journey up the mountain progresses, Krakauer puts it in context by recalling the triumphs and perils of other Everest trips throughout history. The author's own anguish over what happened on the mountain is palpable as he leads readers to ponder timeless questions.
Edition: Reissue
Publication date: 2006-07-01
Dewey code: 982.6
Price: £6.99
Review Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (Avon Nonfiction) / Avon Books:
Edition: Large Print Ed
Publication date: 2006-12-01
RRP: £19.99
Price: £21.98
Review Miracle in the Andes (Charnwood Large Print) / Ulverscroft Large Print Books Ltd:
Publication date: 2003-11-06
RRP: £6.99
Price: £2.83
Review Tears of the Moon / Penguin Books Ltd:
Creator: Tim Pigott-Smith
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2000-04-20
Dewey code: 796
RRP: £12.99
Price: £19.95
Review Endurance (Tape): The True Story of Shackleton's Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic / Orion:When Alfred Lansing's Endurance was first published in 1959, few people in this country-or anywhere else for that matter-had heard of Shackleton or the Imperial Transantarctic Expedition of 1914. Britain's polar history had been rewritten with Shackleton airbrushed out and Captain Scott taking centre stage as the archetypal English hero who died on the Great Barrier on his long haul back from the South Pole. If Scott's deification was almost instantaneous, Shackleton's descent into obscurity was more of a slow fade than a sudden death. He achieved a certain amount of acclaim when South, his own account of the Expedition, was published, but his legend seemed to die with him when he suffered a fatal heart attack on another trip south in 1922. His memory deserved much better. Not only was he a far better explorer than Scott, both in terms of his technical and man management capabilities, but the story of the Transantarctic expedition read like an epic out of a Boys Own annual. With his boat crushed, he led his men across the pack-ice, sailed them in open boats to Elephant Island. Once he realised there was no chance of rescue, he and four crew mates sailed a further 600 miles across the southern ocean to South Georgia where they were shipwrecked. The five men then made the first crossing of the island to reach the whaling station at Stromness. Three attempts and three and a half months later, Shackleton returned to Elephant Island to pick up the remaining men. [+]Not a single member of either party was lost. So we have Lansing to largely thank for Shackleton's rehabilitation. But herein lies the problem. Shackleton's story has been now been so well told both in books-especially Roland Huntford's definitive biography, and in film and TV, that even though Lansing's thrilling account, making liberal use of the diaries of several expedition members, was the first to be published it now feels all terribly familiar and adds nothing to what we already know. Even Frank Hurley's exquisite photographs which illustrate the book now engender a slight feeling of déjà vu-not least because they have already been better reproduced in a single volume published by Bloomsbury. But Lansing deserves his day in the snow and no polar library would be complete without this book. And if, by any chance, you've never previously read a word about Shackleton, this is as good a place as any to start. -John Crace.
| Models & Brands:
High: Stories of Survival from Everest and K2 (Extreme Adventure), Beyond the Darkness: My Near Death Journey to the Edge of Hell and Back, South: A Memoir of the "Endurance" Voyage, Steps Under Water: A Novel, Fire Trap: A Deadly Fire and the Men Who Fought It, In the Heart of the Sea: The Epic True Story That Inspired "Moby Dick", Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows, More Than I Deserved, The Winter Walk, Sailing Alone Around the World, The Cockpit: A Flight of Escape and Discovery, Endurance: An Illustrated Account of Shackleton's Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic, Through Blood and Tears: Surviving Hitler and Stalin (Library of Holocaust Testimonies), Oar-some: The World's First Four-Man Crew Ever to Row Any Ocean, Stoker's Submarine, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Everest Disaster, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (Avon Nonfiction), Miracle in the Andes (Charnwood Large Print), Tears of the Moon, Endurance (Tape): The True Story of Shackleton's Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic |
