Safe Return Doubtful: The Heroic Age of Polar Exploration

Read this book with hot coffee, cocoa or tea at hand, because you will feel the polar chill start to surround you. I had little knowledge of Arctic explorations before Peary and not much more of the Antarctic besides the trio of Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton. This book filled in a lot of gaps, especially on early Arctic exploration. Unfortunately, the question about whether Peary actually reached the North Pole or not -- and if he didn't, was it sextant mismeasurements or fraud -- is only briefly and tangentially discussed. Many polar authors and experts claim he didn't, but last year an explorer duplicated his fast-paced feat. The contingencies of history are interesting, as this book shows. Amundsen had originally planned for the North Pole, but Peary's triumph led him to look south. British humanity excluded dogs for the Antarctic mush; British stupidity refused to use Norwegian horse snowshoes, which might have let Scott beat Amundsen and return alive. If not stupidity and stubbornness, stupidity and sentimentality, leading Scott to add a fifth to his original four-man party, doomed him. The psychology behind this and the Scott-Shackelton dustup was also tred just lightly. But, trying to reach the Arctic by ramming a ship into ice floes, or via ballooon? Read this book for for the lust for the poles, an addiction of human adventure.

To write a book which covers the expansive history of polar exploration is a large undertaking. This book does this that. With a sometimes dim view of successes, the author methodically covers the major polar explorations of both the North and the South Poles. Although Graham can sometimes miss the glory of what some people did, Shackelton's Endurance expedition and Amundsen's Northwest Passage voyage, he does give a great overview of some of the lesser known facts of Polar exploration. If you are looking for a good place to start in learning about Polar explorers this is a good place to start