|
The Worst Journey in the World (Penguin Classics)
|
List Price: $18.00
Our Price: $12.24
Your Save: $ 5.76 ( 32% )
Recent Price Activity
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
 *Eligible orders over $25 ship free
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
|
Average Customer Rating: 
|
|
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 919.8904
EAN: 9780143039389
ISBN: 0143039385
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 688
Publication Date: 2006-02-28
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
The Worst Journey in the World recounts Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Apsley Cherry-Garrard—the youngest member of Scott’s team and one of three men to make and survive the notorious Winter Journey—draws on his firsthand experiences as well as the diaries of his compatriots to create a stirring and detailed account of Scott’s legendary expedition. Cherry himself would be among the search party that discovered the corpses of Scott and his men, who had long since perished from starvation and brutal cold. It is through Cherry’s insightful narrative and keen descriptions that Scott and the other members of the expedition are fully memorialized.
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest polar exploration stories of all time
Comment: I've read almost every book written on exploration of the South Pole, and this book - by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, a member of Scott's expedition who never wrote anything else - is one of the best. The other reviews here give many of the details, so I won't repeat them, but this is worth reading by anyone who loves a great adventure story.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Will
Comment: The Worst Journey in the World By Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Apsley Cherry-Garrard was a privileged English gentleman of twenty-four when he paid 1,000 pounds to accompany Robert Falcon Scott on his ill-fated "Terra Nova" expedition to the South Pole in 1911. It was the twilight of the British Empire, although no one knew it, and there was only one place on Earth left to explore: Antarctica. Scott had prepared for this expedition with his earlier "Discovery" mission, even leaving stores of supplies at various points. Things began to go bad almost as soon as the ship left port: animals sickened, the load shifted, the winds didn't blow enough or blew too much, and the ship got stuck in the Ice.
The general plan was for the group to proceed by sled hauled by themselves, not dogs or machines. This "man-hauling" concept had been abandoned as worthless by Amundsen, the Norwegian who would haunt Scott throughout the journey. Everything that could go bad, did. Animals got sick and died; food spoiled; fuel ran out; men became blinded by the snow glare and frostbitten. The idea was to slog as far South as possible as a group, and then for a smaller force led by Scott to reach the pole.
But it was far colder in the interior than Scott had believed possible - down to Minus 45 and Minus 50. With their limited equipment, survival in those conditions was impossible. Scott and his group essentially froze to death at their last camp. One man walked into a blizzard saying " I am just going outside. I may be a while." Cherry and his group found the leader and his team dead in their final camp, and built a cairn in their honor. One of the final entries in Scott's journal:
"The Norwegians have forestalled us and are first at the Pole. It is a terrible disappointment, and I am very sorry for my loyal companions. .. The Pole, yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected... Great God, this is an Awful Place!"
Cherry never doubted Scott's judgment or character, but others have. Recent biographies including Roland Huntford's "The Last Place on Earth" depict Scott as vain, headstrong, resistant to criticism and petty. Huntford, referring to Cherry's account of Scott's admission that he may have failed to use the dogs properly, says: "this is Scott's first recorded admission of a mistake...that the fault may have been his, and not the animals'. Scott...had begun to feel very doubtful that the ponies will do their job & evidently thinks Amundsen with his dogs may be doing much better. The sight of a commander not only rueing his actions, but lacking the self-control to hide it, was hardly uplifting." (Huntford, "The Last Place on Earth, P. 406) But Scott, despite his many flaws, remains a hero to most of the English speaking world. Cherry himself, having accomplished so much so young, settled into a comfortable upper middle class life in England. writing and speaking of his experience.
"The Worst Journey in the World" is a classic of human endurance and will.
It is inconceivable that men of today's world, using Scott's equipment, technique, and knowledge, could have done what he did.
# # #
Suggestions for Further Reading:
South: The Last Antarctic Expedition of Shackleton and the Endurance (The Explorers Club Classic)
The Last Place on Earth (Modern Library Exploration)
Customer Rating:
Summary: WHAT YOU HOPE YOUR HUSBAND COULD DO
Comment: Get this book and read it to your children. Teach them of the days when men were men (and British at that!). Wean them from the cultural myth that whining and wimping and looking out for yourself alone are desirable traits. This book is about more than survival; it is about life and living. Here men give their all for the mission, for each other, for the animals in their service. You read it and wonder, could I have lived it? The book will answer, reminding you that there is more to life and more to live for, than we ever realized.
Customer Rating:
Summary: In this case, Worst Journey is no conceit
Comment: It's been more than ten years since I read Cherry-Garrard's account of Scott's journey to Antarctica, but I can still feel the lung-searing cold and hear the hellish, monstrous wind coming out of the center of the continent into which the journey was headed. I have never read of anything more terrible than this expedition including Shackleton's truncated Antarctic nightmare and Lewis and Clark's astonishing and dangerous overland haul from St. Louis to the Pacific.
This particular expedition was one terrible misadventure after another almost from the very start when there is a storm at sea right out of the gate as the ship carrying everyone and everything from Tierra del Fuego is swamped and so much food, materiel, and livestock are lost overboard. From there the bad luck never seems to stop. The very fact that these men continued on under circumstances that would have discouraged and then defeated most human beings is almost past credibility. In particular I remember the constant breaking down of the diesel-engined snow cats, the terrible fate of the Asian ponies, the leopard seals, and the long dark impossible trip that Garrard and one other member of the expedition take in the dead of the Antarctic winter to the Emperor Penguin breeding grounds to retrieve a few precious eggs for science. In winter. In the dark. Wearing 1911 woolen clothes, eating preseved 1911 food, and using 1911 (non-)technology. It took 1911 men to do it. I cannot imagine anyone from our time doing this with that equipment. At times I simply had to stop reading and wonder just how much more hardship human beings could stand. I've never felt so physically uncomfortable, so drained and so worried (as a mere reader!) as I was ploughing through this book which was a feat (the writing of it) in itself.
This is a story about a long-vanished era where grit and determination were measured on a different scale from what we see today. An absolute must for any lover of true adventure. It truly was the worst journey in the world against which any subsequent missioin of its kind - including extra-terrestrial - must be judged.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Thrilling and tragic
Comment: Apsley Cherry-Garrard was only 24 when he set out on Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova expedition. He was the youngest member of the group and, for my money, the best qualified for the later task of writing the complete story. Why? The Worst Journey in the World is an awe-inspiring adventure, told in such a way that you feel the young man's wide-eyed wonder as your own.
Very few novels have gripped and excited me as this book has, and far fewer nonfiction works. Cherry--as his friends called him--writes with a vigor and attention to detail and drama usually reserved for thrillers. The blizzards, storms at sea, killer whale attacks, sub-zero temperatures, and exhausting struggles with sled dogs, ponies, and yawning crevasses are vividly depicted. By the end of the book, you almost feel as though you've been on the journey with him. The "you are there" phenomenon is something I encounter very seldom in a book. This book actually managed to make me cold.
The Worst Journey in the World is not solely devoted to the adventure and the final tragedy of finding Scott and his men frozen to death. Cherry takes time out to comment on the scientific significance of their work in Antarctica, of the need for exploration regardless of immediate results, and, in conclusion, of why Scott's return from the Pole ended so bitterly. These sections of the work put the adventure into perspective, so that not only do you experience the good and bad times with the expedition, you learn what ideals drove them and what was at stake with every piece of bad luck.
The book isn't perfect, of course. Some of the scientific information Cherry relates is, of course, now outdated. The book starts off rather slowly, and the reader must pick up and remember the names of the other expeditionary members on their own--Cherry does not list or describe the others in detail until somewhere near the middle of the book.
That said, The Worst Journey in the World is still an outstanding nonfiction adventure. Once I started this book I could read nothing else. Anyone with an interest in the Antarctic, history, or exploration in general will find this book fascinating.
Highly recommended.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
