2024 the best place on earth book review

Price: $20.00 - $17.52
(as of Dec 16, 2024 08:51:09 UTC - Details)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Pole was the most coveted prize in the fiercely nationalistic modern age of exploration. In the brilliant dual biography, the award-winning writer Roland Huntford re-examines every detail of the great race to the South Pole between Britain's Robert Scott and Norway's Roald Amundsen. Scott, who dies along with four of his men only eleven miles from his next cache of supplies, became Britain's beloved failure, while Amundsen, who not only beat Scott to the Pole but returned alive, was largely forgotten. This account of their race is a gripping, highly readable history that captures the driving ambitions of the era and the complex, often deeply flawed men who were charged with carrying them out. THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH is the first of Huntford's masterly trilogy of polar biographies. It is also the only work on the subject in the English language based on the original Norwegian sources, to which Huntford returned to revise and update this edition.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Modern Library; First Thus edition (September 7, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 640 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0375754741
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375754746
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 1.3 x 7.94 inches
Reviewer: Steven M. Anthony
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Fascinating History
Review: One of my favorite genres is non-fiction, exploration accounts. From Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage (Lewis and Clark) to Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Alan Morehead’s White Nile and Blue Nile, accounts of the travails faced by explorers have always fascinated me.One subset of this genre is polar exploration. I’ve read several works whose subject was the Northwest Passage and the Franklin Expedition. I’ve read of the journeys of Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance. This book focuses on the race to the South Pole, and the two protagonists who participated in that race, Norwegian Roald Amundsen and Englishman Robert Falcon Scott.Both of these explorers had spent time in the south polar region before setting their sights on a 1911 expedition whose aim was to be first to the pole, with national pride on the line. History reveals that Amundsen was the victor and Scott has been mythologized as the hard luck loser, who, along with four companions died on the return trip after reaching the pole five weeks after Amundsen.This book, when first published in 1979 blew the Scott mythology to smithereens and was greeted with great outrage in Britain. Scott’s expedition was converted from a star-crossed, superhuman and heroic effort, to a completely bungled, poorly planned and even more poorly executed travesty, led by a man wholly unsuited for the task.The author closely examines both expedition leaders, along with the steps taken to prepare for and execute the many steps necessary to successfully accomplish the task of reaching the pole. In each instance, Amundsen was tireless and laser focused on the research and implementation, whereas Scott was negligent and seemingly uninterested, even many times categorically wrong in his assessments (such as the idea that dogs could not perform under Arctic conditions and that skis were a hindrance rather than a benefit).In fact, it is difficult to believe that Amundsen was the absolutely perfect expedition leader painted by the author, while Scott was a bumbling idiot, making the wrong decision and painfully obvious errors, every single time his leadership skills were needed. It is almost as if the author had an agenda to elevate Amundsen and denigrate Scott and took every opportunity to do so.Certainly, it cannot be argued that Amundsen reached and returned from the pole first, whereas Scott and his companions died in the effort. However, hindsight is 20/20 and many of the methods utilized by Scott were state of the art for the period. Amundsen incorporated many new and revolutionary methods in his expedition and proved to be correct. He was rewarded with success, at a relatively modest cost. That does not, however, mean that Scott was necessarily an utter fool. He was not exceptional, whereas Amundsen was. Scott was a man of his time and behaved as such. Perhaps he was even not up to the standards of his countryman, Ernest Shackleton, but it is worth noting that Scott at least reached the pole, whereas Shackleton did not. There is certainly an easily recognized difference in the philosophy of the Norwegians, who were almost clinical in their analysis of how to achieve the ultimate goal as efficiently as possible, and the Englishmen, in whose mind the method of attaining the goal was of equal importance (no pain, no glory).Maybe Scott was every bit as bad as painted by the author. Or perhaps the author knew that a contrarian viewpoint, trashing a heretofore national hero, would generate the kind of interest and notoriety needed to gain interest for his work. In any event, the account of both expeditions was fascinating and well presented with a number of very helpful maps. I can highly recommend this book for anyone that enjoys history in general and accounts of exploration in particular.

Reviewer: Jim Short
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Best book on management ever written
Review: OK, so this LOOKS like a book on polar exploration, and there certainly is a lot to recommend it on that front, but ultimately it's the story of two different management styles. In a past company, we'd have an annual offsite meeting and each year a different one of us was supposed to give a book related to our business to the others. We got the usual stuff like Good To Great or Crossing the Chasm, books written by people who sit in academic offices and try to figure out what makes groups of individuals successful.But you couldn't ask for two more diametrically opposed approaches to the business of making it to the South Pole than Scott and Amundsen. Amundsen prepares relentlessly: prior to the South Pole attempt he's been in the Canadian Arctic studying the way the Inuit are able to survive. He learns how they make their clothing to stay warm, how they make igloos, how they use their dogs. He knows that dogs work best in high output, short duration stretches, and he learns to ski along side the sleds at the pace the dogs want to go. He spends a year on the Belgica locked in the ice through the first Antarctic night experienced by Europeans, and he knows about scurvy and the emotional toll that the dark takes. He lives closely with his men, knows them well, and does everything he can to foster camaraderie within the group. When it doesn't work out, he's willing to cut out those who don't fit from making the journey. Even the way he measures out the area around the South Pole to be certain he actually got there shows how intent he is on leaving nothing to chance.Scott on the other hand has one other piece of high latitude work under his belt from the first British expedition to the Ross Sea area in which he'd made a sprint towards the South Pole with Shackleton and showed no compassion for the latter's sickness, sending him home disgraced afterwards. His general attitude was that as a member of the British naval officer corps, he had what it took inside him and "it" would somehow see him through. He shows up at his camp with four different transport means, none of which he had done extensive training with: barely tested mechanized sledges, skis, dogs, and ponies. He discounts the dogs because they don't work well when used at a pace equal to what a man can achieve hauling a sled by himself. He doesn't make any training program for his men to learn to ski - some of them are motivated to fool around with the skis, but most do nothing. He holds himself aloof from his men and although some of them hold him in high regard, others feel dismissed. As they begin to approach the pole, Scott refuses to recognize the reality that he is too late and should turn back short of his objective to have a chance of survival.And in the end the results are no surprise - Amundsen breezes to the pole and back like he's on a modern day eco-tour, and Scott and the men who came with him all perish.Huntford's book is a gripping story that still has time for details that make the reader understand how vastly different it is to go to the South Pole than the North Pole. You can feel the tension of crossing fractured sections of glacial ice where any step could plunge through the snow and send you hundreds of feet to an icy death in a chasm. There's the frustration of trying to get your sledge to cross the high plateau leading to the pole when it's nearly dead flat but carved with sastrugi that makes it a maze of difficult-to-cross ruts. And the desperation of hoping to find the next cache of supplies and wondering if your last bearings were really accurate. All this comes home vividly in this superb book. I've read a couple dozen books on Arctic and Antarctic exploration, and to me this is the best.

Reviewer: Mauricio Velloso
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: If one likes adventure, enjoys planning and research, and is not scared of a good number of pages, It is likely to enjoy this book.

Reviewer: J13R
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Ouvrage fort instructif et prenant

Reviewer: Harrison Lennox-Wright
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Uno de los libros mas inspiradores y relevantes de toda mi vida. Muy recomendable.

Reviewer: victor brill
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Wunderweit!!!! DANKE!!!!!!

Reviewer: MZ
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Bellissimo! Appassionante. Imperdibile per chi ama letture sul periodo eroico della conquista dei Poli