This is not the story of a successful expedition with conquering heroes returning home to a glamorous welcome. It is much better than that. This is the story of an expedition gone horribly awry and the courageous feats of leadership and teamwork by expedition members that turned what should have been a terrible tragedy into an incredible tale of survival.

The Shackleton expedition is one of the great stories from the tail end of the golden age of exploration. On the eve of WWI, Ernest Shackleton puts together a British Expedition to cross the Antartic continent. They never reach the Antartic continent. His ship, the Endurance, is trapped in pack ice a day's sail from landfall. After drifting in the ice for months, the ship is crushed and sinks. The expedition team spends the next few months stranded on the ice pack, eventually making their way to tiny Elephant Island in a few of the ship's lifeboats. Shackleton and six of his crew make a desperate bid to sail for help across 800 miles of stormy South Atlantic ocean in a 23 foot lifeboat to a whaling station on South Georgia Island. After weeks at sea, Shackleton and his crew make landful on South Georgia - on the wrong shore. He and his crew then crossed 23 miles of uncharted mountainous terrain to reach the whaling station on the opposite shore. It took 3 more months before Shackleton was able to reach Elephant Island to rescue the remainder of his crew. The complete map of the expedition's route at PBS Nova website illustrates the incredible incredible nature of this story.

The voyage to South Georgia Island (Voyage of the James Caird) is widely regarded as one of the greatest small boat journey's of all time. Surviving the dangerous southern oceans was a great feat of seamanship and finding the way to South Georgia Island an almost miraculous feat of navigation.

This is an expertly researched and well written account of the famous Shackleton expedition. The author is the curator of the Shackleton Endurance exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History and clearly knows the material well. One dramatic feature of the book is the inclusion of many original photographs taken by expedition photographer Frank Hurley - many never before published. The photographs alone make this book a success. The author has also carefully researched key expedition members through journals kept by expedition members.

Oddly, for a book this well researched, there is no index and no table of contents. It just jumps right into the story. An expedition timeline would have been a welcome addition as well. These are minor shortcomings though and don't detract significantly. This book is highly recommended - check it out.