Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic: The Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told: Amazon.de: Alfred Lansing: Englische Bücher

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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 -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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You can't really fail with a book about the Endurance. Although Ernest Shackleton's attempt to make the first Trans-Antarctic crossing barely made it out of base camp, his expedition has gone into the history books as one of the great epics of polar travel. Endurance left England in August 1914 and reached the pack-ice off Antarctica in January the following year. It sank in November, crushed by the weight of the ice, leaving Shackleton and his 27 men stranded in one of the most desolate areas of the world with no hope of rescue. Undaunted, Shackleton led his team to the edge of the ice, dragging three open life-boats that had been salvaged from the Endurance every step of the way. They then sailed to Elephant Island, a remote uninhabited outcrop of rock, where they lived off penguins and seagull. By April 1916, Shackleton realised there was no chance of them being spotted by a passing ship and he and five men set sail in the open-decked 20-foot boat, the James Caird, across 650 miles of the stormiest seas of the southern oceans for South Georgia. After narrowly surviving being shipwrecked on the reefs surrounding the western coast of South Georgia, Shackleton then proceeded to make the first-ever crossing of the mountainous island before reaching the sanctuary of the whaling station at Stromness. And it was Shackleton, in person, who led the rescue mission to Elephant Island to pick up the rest of his men. Miraculously, all 28 men survived.

Alfred Lansing's book, first published in 1957, tells it as it was. He draws heavily on the diaries and other first-person memoirs of those involved, and he writes with both style and pace. As such it is the classic tale of derring-do. What Lansing misses, though, is the social context. He provides little sense of history; in August 1914, when the Endurance left England, World War One was starting. By the time he returned home two years later, thousands of young men of his generation were lying dead on the battlefields of the Somme. The contrast is almost unbearable but Lansing makes nothing of it. Similarly he does not explain how someone like Scott, whose South Pole expedition several years earlier had been an unmitigated disaster of incompetence and bad planning, should go down in British history as one of our all-time heroes, while Shackleton, whose exploits were indeed truly heroic, has lived for so long in Scott's shadow. --John Crace -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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A Gripping Quick Read 13. Juni 2000

Von A. Ross

Format:Taschenbuch

One of the best-known of the many books about Englishman Shakleton's 1915 expedition to cross the South Pole, this is essentially a quick, easy-reading adventure story. Aptly titled, it's a pretty gripping and amazing story, and will put to shame any bad camping story of one's own. I guess what one emerges with is sheer amazement that anyone managed to survive the conditions these men were exposed to. A nice modern companion book to this is "North to the Night."

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Startling good read 19. September 2000

Von George Schaefer

Whew!! That's the first word that comes to my mind. It surfaced in my thoughts numerous times as I was reading this tale. This book is overwhelming. I had always heard tales about Shackleton and this was a most compelling read. I found myself unable to put it down. It just grabs a hold of you and won't let go. Alfred Lansing did a superb job of storytelling here. It is one of the most amazing tales of human courage and endurance ever written. This is a fabulous story. Sir Ernest Shackleton truly displayed extraordinary mettle in spite failing to achieve the initial objective. His leadership is undeniable. He held a crew together to endure the harshest climate on the planet. That the entire crew survived the venture is testament to the power of the human spirit. The will to survive can attain soaring heights as this tale suggests. Lansing attempts to get into the nature of the different men but he allows their diaries to dictate the writing. This is great because supposition by authors of nonfiction can be fatuous. Drawing excerpts from the diaries of the men is a way to draw upon the incredible human drama and psychology that must have unfolded in this venture. The obstacles encountered by the crew are staggering. The wind, the dampness, the bitter cold and the long months of darkness in the winter seem like more than any man should be able to stand. They slept in wet sleeping bags in sub-freezing temperature; ate unappetizing foods; and still managed to keep their hopes alive. These were not accommodations up to Hyatt standards. One wonders how many people today would be tough enough to triumph over these hardships. The pain, ennui and discomfort must have been staggering. I found myself just shaking my head with awe at numerous passages in the book. These are men who went to Hell and came back alive. That is remarkable in and of itself. This book is a classic account of one of man's most remarkable journeys. Read it and discover for yourself.

Reading in it's amazing best 11. Mai 2000

Von Ebayee -- Barrio2000

This is a superbly written account of an Antarctic expedition led by Sir Ernest Shakleton on a ship named Endurance. It is trapped by ice and eventually crushed by it. In order to survive, the crew look toward it's leader for answers and the only chance at rescue is to make it to a whaling station that is more than 1500 miles away. Everything is frozen, the weather is the worst on earth and thats just the begining. It's all here, the amazing spirit that some humans show when pushed to the brink of death, starvation, freezing, thirst, tiredness to the deepest parts of one's existence, humor, friendship, respect, leadership, etc. How it must have been for these men to survive such a harrowing experience is beyond belief. If not because it was so well documented by the individual crew members who kept journals, indeed no one would beleive it. To have survived so many months floating on a moving, cracking, shifting, crushing ice floe only to have to undertake an 800 mile sea voyage in a 22 foot lifeboat in the most brutal ocean in the world where winds rarely fall below huricane force, find and land on a hellish coast of a small island easily missed. Then on foot and starving have to coss it on ground so treacherous that no one had crossed it before, or would dare again for another 50 yrs. A brutal reading that will leave you exhausted. Pass it on and share with your friends and family.