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juushikaTitle: The Heart of the Antarctic: Being the Story of the British Antarctic Expedition 1907-9
Author: Earnest Shackleton
Published: 1909
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 1310 (670+640)
Total Page Count: 555,165
Text Number: 2082-3
Read Because: cold boys, haters edition; borrowed I think from Open Library although it's a pain and a half to track down both complete volumes of the first edition; if you want to go down this rabbit hole, Library of Congress has volume 1 and Open Library has volume 2; the 1914 popular edition I assume is much abridged at 500 pages, but it was edited by Shackleton & is much easier to find; but my notes about readability are re: the 1300 page mammoth so that's nothing
Review:
The Nimrod expedition was the first Shackleton led, 1907-9, placing it directly between Scott's Discovery (on which Shackleton was a member) and infamous Terra Nova, and later overshadowed by Shackleton's also-infamous Endurance. Hate to say it, because I'm certain I'd find Shackleton, the man, super obnoxious, but he knows what the people want. This is some of the best curated, most satisfying expedition writing I've read, intentionally accessible to the layreader, incredibly corporeal and crunchy in detail, right down to descriptions of sleeping arrangements and food poisoning, to photos of people in their bunks or in drag, while still willing to skim elements that might be repetitive recounted in full. Kudos, I think, to his editor, as Shackleton's letters imply much of that curation and directness comes from an outside influence; and it's utterly absent in Dr. David's extensive sections, which make for a slow end to what's already a mammoth text. The various appendixes are skippable, although whenever these guys write about penguins it's always a delight. I read this immediately after Riffenburgh's Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition and appreciate the larger context, specifically re: social frictions that Shackleton understandably elides despite their significant impact on the expedition.
This expedition exists in intimate conversation with Scott's, and the tension between them is both petty and amiable. But what fascinates me is that Shackleton, too, almost died in his effort at the Pole; in fact, almost anyone who did significant man-hauling in Antarctica almost died, cutting corners and overextending themselves in this supremely inhospitable climate. The more I read, the more the death of Scott et al. feels not like bad luck but simply an inevitability: some sledging party was bound to freeze out there, and it was nearly this one.
Author: Earnest Shackleton
Published: 1909
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 1310 (670+640)
Total Page Count: 555,165
Text Number: 2082-3
Read Because: cold boys, haters edition; borrowed I think from Open Library although it's a pain and a half to track down both complete volumes of the first edition; if you want to go down this rabbit hole, Library of Congress has volume 1 and Open Library has volume 2; the 1914 popular edition I assume is much abridged at 500 pages, but it was edited by Shackleton & is much easier to find; but my notes about readability are re: the 1300 page mammoth so that's nothing
Review:
The Nimrod expedition was the first Shackleton led, 1907-9, placing it directly between Scott's Discovery (on which Shackleton was a member) and infamous Terra Nova, and later overshadowed by Shackleton's also-infamous Endurance. Hate to say it, because I'm certain I'd find Shackleton, the man, super obnoxious, but he knows what the people want. This is some of the best curated, most satisfying expedition writing I've read, intentionally accessible to the layreader, incredibly corporeal and crunchy in detail, right down to descriptions of sleeping arrangements and food poisoning, to photos of people in their bunks or in drag, while still willing to skim elements that might be repetitive recounted in full. Kudos, I think, to his editor, as Shackleton's letters imply much of that curation and directness comes from an outside influence; and it's utterly absent in Dr. David's extensive sections, which make for a slow end to what's already a mammoth text. The various appendixes are skippable, although whenever these guys write about penguins it's always a delight. I read this immediately after Riffenburgh's Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition and appreciate the larger context, specifically re: social frictions that Shackleton understandably elides despite their significant impact on the expedition.
This expedition exists in intimate conversation with Scott's, and the tension between them is both petty and amiable. But what fascinates me is that Shackleton, too, almost died in his effort at the Pole; in fact, almost anyone who did significant man-hauling in Antarctica almost died, cutting corners and overextending themselves in this supremely inhospitable climate. The more I read, the more the death of Scott et al. feels not like bad luck but simply an inevitability: some sledging party was bound to freeze out there, and it was nearly this one.
