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An Empire Of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, And The Heroic Age Of Antarctic Science (2011)

by Edward J. Larson(Favorite Author)

3.49 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0300154089 (ISBN13: 9780300154085)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Yale University Press

review 1: This is a book that I really wanted to like. Perhaps it is because I listened to it as an audio book, but I think not. The author made a strategic decision to tell the story of the antarctic exploration in chronological silos spanning the late 1800 to early 1900s. A chapter dealing with magnetism, a chapter on glaciology, a chapter on geography, a chapter on geology, etc. Into each of these chapters he drops personal tidbits and gossip, and makes an attempt at tying together threads of Empire, decline, masculinity, homosexuality, scientific hubris, and international intrigue. Unfortunately, his narrative device of covering each scientific discipline chronologically in different chapters shreds the narrative flow, and leaves the reader trying to piece together fragments of ... morestory that area scattered across many pages. At the end, I feel like I have invested a large amount of effort and time in this book, with meager reward. More to the point, rather than leaving me hungry for more, I want to read someone else's book which tells the story better.
review 2: This book is very interesting. Because I read it electronically, and I'm aging, the maps were impossible to read. However, I got out my huge National Geographic maps and you still couldn't make out much. It needed more 'local' maps.I was enthralled during the first part, but the book slowed down over the remainder as it basically time-warped back through the same voyages focusing on different areas of science. The other thing I would fault it for is that it assumes you, you modern you, know the right answers to all the questions the explorers had. For example, a considerable controversy arises over which way the higher-level winds blow near the south pole. A conclusion is arrived at, but it isn't clear whether or not that conclusion is the modern one, and what the implications of that are for the global circulation models.But all in all it is fascinating. The explorers are so extravagantly reckless with their lives it defies imagination. I got the same feeling from Pierre Burton's books on the building of the Canadian National Railway. Perhaps the final expression of it is the Scott party keeping a heavy load of geological samples on their sledge when they are starving and freezing to death. less

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