Endurance Shackleton Book Review

Endurance Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
Published by arrangement with Mrs. Alfred Lansing
Copyright 1959
Endurance Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage Alfred Lansing effectively uses the style of a biography to tell the epic tale of Ernest Shackleton and his crew’s experience in the nonfiction book Endurance Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage. The purpose of the novel is to describe Shackleton’s adventure to cross the last uncharted continent, and the enormous hardships the men aboard The Endurance endured after an iceberg in the Weddell Sea crushes their ship. The book is an intense and suspenseful account of the truly incredible survival of Shackleton and all 27 of his crew. Despite the bland and dry nature of most nonfiction books, Endurance Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage feels like a high pace action movie. Even with a few minor weaknesses, the book is overall a fantastic read and is a safe recommendation for anyone interested in nonfiction that is riveting. The book begins with the unexpected crushing of The Endurance by the ice pack and a description of the crew scrambling to salvage supplies. The men are quickly forced to abandon the ship and attempt to survive the extreme and harsh climate traversing large ice floes on foot. At this point, “Many of them, it seemed, finally grasped for the first time just how desperate things really were.” (100) The men initially set up a long-term camp called “Ocean Camp,” floating uncontrollably on an ice floe up until the sinking of The Endurance. Next, the men were forced to establish “Patience Camp” where they struggled to survive. The crew lived on the ice floe with nothing to do but let time pass up until April 9th, when the ice thawed forcing the crew into their boats. The irony of the crew striving to survive against the extreme cold caused by the ice they lived on, now facing a new threat