Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd

I enjoyed the author's "Power at Sea" trilogy so I figured he would do a good job delving into Admiral Byrd. I was right. Unlike Edwin Hoyt's biography from about 30-40 years ago, Rose had the advantage of being able to use Byrd's personal papers housed at Ohio State University. One of the most interesting things those papers prove is that Byrd, as suspected by many, never reached the North Pole in 1926 (this is based on a diary that was unavailable to previous writers and other evidence). More startling, at least to me, is that Byrd knew he hadn't reached it but continued the fiction that he had up until he died. Along the way he and his brother (Senator Byrd of Va.) interfered with the career of Bernt Balchen, a fine airman (much better than Byrd, IMO) who knew Byrd's dirty little secret. Rose gives a pretty even-handed account of Byrd's life. As a public hero the polar explorer often came across as too good to be true, and it looks like that really was the case. I see that Rose has written a book about Byrd's Antarctic expeditions and so I'll have to look that one up as well.