BOOK REVIEW: ENDURANCE by Alfred Lansing

ENDURANCE: SHAKELTON'S INCREDIBLE VOYAGE
Alfred Lansing
Non-fiction
Audible Unabridged Edition

Bound for Antarctica, where polar explorer Ernest Shackleton planned to cross on foot the last uncharted continent, the Endurance set sail from England in August 1914. In January 1915, after battling its way for six weeks through a thousand miles of pack ice and now only a day’s sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice.

For ten months the ice-moored Endurance drifted northwest before it was finally crushed. But for Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men the ordeal had barely begun. It would end only after a near-miraculous journey by Shackleton and a skeleton crew through over 850 miles of the South Atlantic’s heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.

This astonishing tale of survival by Shackleton and all twenty-seven of his men for over a year on the ice-bound Antarctic seas, as Time magazine put it, “defined heroism.” Alfred Lansing’s brilliantly narrated book has long been acknowledged as the definitive account of the Endurance’s fateful trip.

MY REVIEW:

I hardly know what to say except that everyone should read or listen to this book! Ernest Shakelton has to have been the greatest hero of all time. What that man endured and risked to save the lives of his entire crew - and succeed at doing it - it beyond anything any fiction writer could ever dream up. The Endurance's crew's two year voyage in the harshest climate on earth left me literally gripping my steering wheel. (I listened to it in the car.) Every chapter, every scene, every word of this book is astounding, shocking, awe-inspiring! Makes my mundane life feel very small in comparison. Wow! And to think that Shakelton's voyage began his voyage in August 1914, one hundred years ago.

CONTENT RATING:

Profanity:  Mild
Violence:  Moderate
Sexuality:  Mild