In August 1914, days before the outbreak of the First World War, the renowned explorer Ernest Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven set sail for the South Atlantic in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize in the history of exploration: the first crossing on foot of the Antarctic continent. Weaving a treacherous path through the freezing Weddell Sea, they had come within eighty-five miles of their destination when their ship, Endurance, was trapped fast in the ice pack. Soon the ship was crushed like matchwood, leaving the crew stranded on the floes. Their ordeal would last for twenty months, and they would make two near-fatal attempts to escape by open boat before their final rescue.

Drawing upon previously unavailable sources, Caroline Alexander gives us a riveting account of Shackleton's expedition--one of history's greatest epics of survival. And she presents the astonishing work of Frank Hurley, the Australian photographer whose visual record of the adventure has never before been published comprehensively. Together, text and image re-create the terrible beauty of Antarctica, the awful destruction of the ship, and the crew's heroic daily struggle to stay alive, a miracle achieved largely through Shackleton's inspiring leadership.

The survival of Hurley's remarkable images is scarcely less miraculous: The original glass plate negatives, from which most of the book's illustrations are superbly reproduced, were stored in hermetically sealed cannisters that survived months on the ice floes, a week in an open boat on the polar seas, and several more months buried in the snows of a rocky outcrop called Elephant Island. Finally Hurley was forced to abandon his professional equipment; he captured some of the most unforgettable images of the struggle with a pocket camera and three rolls of Kodak film.

Published in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History's landmark exhibition on Shackleton's journey, The Endurance thrillingly recounts one of the last great adventures in the Heroic Age of exploration--perhaps the greatest of them all.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 11/03/1998
ISBN: 9780375404030
Pages: 224
Weight: 2.07lbs
Size: 9.28h x 8.52w x 0.82d
Award: Alex Awards - Winner

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 07/01/1998 pg. 70
Publishers Weekly 10/05/1998 pg. 63
Kirkus Reviews 10/01/1998 pg. 1423
Booklist 10/15/1998 pg. 389
New York Times 12/27/1998 pg. 10
Booklist Ed Choice Adu Bk YA's 01/01/1999 pg. 780
Library Journal 10/15/1998 pg. 81
Booklist 04/01/1999 pg. 1400
Booklist 09/15/1999 pg. 224
Publishers Weekly Best Books 01/01/1998 pg. 44
ALA Best Books Young Adults 01/01/2000 pg. 1339
Booklist 04/01/2001 pg. 1455
Booklist 03/01/2002 pg. 1085
Library Journal 07/01/1998
Harvard Business Review 03/01/2010 pg. 128

Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 34754 / Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition
Reading Level: 8.6 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 11