Roland Huntford has written perhaps the best study of polar exploration. The contrast between the two , Amundsen and Scott, is so striking, it is a wonder that Scott is generally remembered at all.His methods were so slack, his personality so ill-suited to the task at hand, his leadership bordered on being criminally negligent. Scott became that strange type of British hero, one whose incompetence is romanticized into fame( i.e. The Titanic or the Charge of the Light Brigade). Amundsen however, dispays all the qualities necessary for a polar explorer (or any leader). He was smart, adaptable, inventive, and organized. He did have some faults(somewhat unforgiving, vanity), but his results made him the greatest polar explorer of all time.His deeds included the Northwest Passage, 1st to winter in the Antarctic, Of course the South Pole, first to complete the Northeast and Northwest Passage, first to fly across the Arctic Ocean.He was a modern Viking, always seeking the unknown. It is somewhat baffling that he is not more recognized for his accomplishments.

It has been over 80 years and only now the truth about 2 different Antartic expeditions have come to light.We can finally see Capt. Robert Falcon Scott as the bumbling, incompetent that he was. For his lack of planning, his weakness towards animals, and his general lack of coming to terms with the enviromental conditions he would be experiencing caused the deaths of 4 of his team mates, and his own as well.But we also see Capt. Roald Amundsen as a hard, cold man. He wouldn't accept criticism of his ideas and concepts. He could never forget an insult, or deny a friendship.This book details the ups and downs in both expeditions. Giving the reader of being along side each of the groups, and trying to cope with the hardships that each group endured.

An excellent book. Being English I was raised on the myths surrounding Scott. This book exposed his shortcomings as an explorer and planner of an expedition. By contrast I was overwhelmed by Amundsen's lifelong committment to polar exploration. The lengths to which he went to make sure that he was as well prepared as possible contrasted sharply with the Brittish expedition. This book is well written and spurred my interest in the Antartic. The photographs and additional information such as the dietary allowances per man found at the back made it even more interesting that it's spectatcular subject matter.

Rarely have I read and re-read a book with as much interest as this one. The pictures in the book was thought lost until re-discovered in a loft in Oslo in 1986. It provides an unusual insight into early polar exploration from both a pictoral and literary perspective

As opposed to all the badly written adventure fiction books of today, this is an excellent photographic record of Amundsen's adventures. It's a tribute to the man who was among the first to winter in the Antarctic, was the first to reach the South Pole, was the first to fly over the arctic ocean and the North Pole, and was killed while attempting to rescue another expedition that had crashed in the Arctic. A photographic tribute to a truely great man.

In the Foreword, Roland Huntford describes Amundsen's narrative as "all that Scott's is not". How right he is! This a very large book, but nonetheless an easy read. Amundsen relates a fascinating tale of fortune, misfortune, hardship, and ultimately - success. The narrative is detailed, but not overly so. In many places, a dose of humor is weaved in. Complete with numerous photos, maps, and scientific data, this book should be considered one of the great narratives of exploration. The great moral lesson of this tale is that preparedness ultimately leads to success. Is it any wonder that Roald Amundsen and his comrades won the race to the South Pole?

Recent years have seen a re-examination of the Golden Age of Antarctic Exploration. Roland Huntford in his excellent books "The Last Place on Earth" and "Shackleton" helped to debunk the myth of the glorious failure (Scott the Martyr) as an example to follow.

The greatest tale of this age was surrounded by no great tales of hardship, no honeyed or sanitised versions of the deed. In this book we hear in the words of the greatest exponent of the art of polar travel, the story of that rarest of plans - the perfectly executed coup.

For a coup it was. When Amundsen turned from the North Pole to the South after the question of "the great nail" had been settled by Cook & Peary, his decision was treated in many sectors (most notably an unbalanced and jingoistic British Press) as underhanded and double dealing. Amundens account of the reasoning behind it makes clear that any deceit was necessary to ensure no forestalling of his plans by others - not only Scott. To ensure the future of his extended plan (the drift across the Arctic which was eventually carried out in the "Maud") he knew the Press Barons would need an exclusive and juicy story. The South Pole would give him this currency.

The book is written in an honest and clean style - an extension of the Man and his nature. The hardships faced are almost disguised by the simple tale of their telling. To strike up an unknown glacier and forge his way over virgin ground on the way to the polar plateau and the Pole itself displays fortitude and grit we can only marvel at in todays world. But his description of the task is hidden behind a work-a-day narrative. To truly appreciate the splendour of the achievement is difficult in our modern era.

One cannot help but admire the total outcome of the plan. There are few tales in history and few great men who can truly say they accomplished exactly what they set out to do in the manner in which they planned. Those who can are Masters of their field. Amundsen is such a man - and master.

A feature of this book is the credit given by Amundsen to those who went with him. Where others claimed responsibility for the great deeds of their men, Amundsen retreats to the background and gives the credit to those who did the act. Natural humility is a trait of the Norwegian nature and Amundsen shows this in the writing of the book. There is no playing to the crowd but deeds are allowed to speak for themselves.

To appreciate the tale, read the book and marvel.

This is a very dynamically written biography of Fridtjöf Nansen, polar explorer who established the farthest north not to be beaten for a couple of next years. The journey in "Fram", custom built ship, is bizarre enough, indeed. As intended, the ship entered polar ocean close to the Siberian coast of Taimyr Peninsula, where it was locked frozen in the ice for the next three years. The expedition mainly performed some scientific observations, self-imprisoned in the lonely ice of the north. The drift helped the frozen ship move slowly towards the North Pole with no activity on the part of explorers. It failed however to approach the pole itself, so Nansen set for the pole using dogs and sleighs, together with only one human companion, Hjalmar Johanssen. Cut off from the ship and inventory, they tried hard to achieve their goal. Having failed, they decided not to come back to the ship, which itself would be hard to find given the conditions of the environment and the ice drift. They headed for Svalbard instead, hundreds of kilometers away, instead. Meantime, they discovered an unknown archipelago, or at least it seemed so to them. They spent winter there in the ice cave, having hunted enough walruses to make a living. The story is full of adventures, exciting, unexpected, amusing or just otherwise sad, but always engaging. Read for yourself how they ended up. The journey for the farthest north is only part of the book, which is extensively long, covering all Nansen's life, and all of his activities, including the League of Nations leadership, for which later he was awarded a Nobel prize. Very recommended, as it is by no means a typical biography.

Our book club, all ladies over 60, loved this book. It is a wonderful subject for discussion - Nansen himself, his adventures,his heroics, his accomplishments and Huntford's amazing writing makes for a great read whether or not you are
Norwegian.

Nansen is a norwegian hero and legend. Huntford does a thorough job uncovering Nansen, the man and his triumphs. The Fram expedition and his travels with Johansen make this book hard to put down. Huntford is the premier biographer of polar explorers. Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen, and Nansen are all featured in books by Huntford. To learn more about norwegians, one only needs to read this book. Nansen was not only an adventurer, he was a pioneering scientist!

This is a page-turner of the first order. I came to Huntford after reading Alfred North Lansing's Endurance, which whetted my appetite for more Shackleton. Huntford has done that, and much more. Shackleton emerges as a complex figure, alienated in civilization, a unique leader of men in the most brutal conditions imaginable. His cynicism and sarcasm about English Antarctic explorers is telling. His distaste for Scott and admiration for Amundsen only adds spice to a story that is rich from the beginning. Although the book runs nearly 700 pages, it's difficult to put down because the story is so good and Huntford is such a deft story-teller.

Huntford's book is the definitive Shackleton. Contemporaries compare Shackleton to Churchill; in his ability to use language with presence of personality to entertain, convince and convert listeners into followers. He couldn't be trusted with women or money but on the ice or at sea many men trusted him with their lives; repeatedly. He had the ability to make his dreams yours and make you want to achieve them. You will find here the leadership that was beyond Scotts comprehension, the perseverance that the RGS needed but could not recognize, and the courage not to sacrifice life for fame. Shackleton was one of the few men in history who in desperate circumstances actually improved under the stress; became more resourceful, more courageous, more obstinate.

If Lansings book left you wide-eyed and open-mouthed in astonishment this book will compound that, fill in the social and political context, and completely describe Shacks and all who came in contact with his whirlwind of adventure, ambition, and survival.

Put this book up on your shelf next to Manchester's Chruchill, Morris' Fisher, or Rice's Burton.

I first read of Shackleton in National Geographic. That only whetted my appetite to hear his entire exruciating journey. Roland's biography took me two months to read, but it was worth it.

I will never forget Ernest Shackleton. From "Shackleton" I leaned about leadership, the power of hope, optimism, human relationships; the power of dreams, perseverance. You will learn more from "Shackleton" in two months than you will from a lifetime of MBA professors.

Shackleton's antarctic journeys are the most engaging tales of survival, endurance and human pressure that I have ever read. Can you image yourself crossing 1,000 miles of frigid south Atlantic seas in a 20 foot boat, with 3 men, a box of matches, a pulpy map, a Victorian compass, and insufficient water in order to save the lives of 50 men who are in an even worse predicament! He did all that and more.

If you like real life stories of survival and adventure, you will enjoy this book to no end.

There are two important facts to remember about The Last Place on Earth. The first is that its author, Roland Huntford, comes to it with the clear agenda of debunking Scott and lionizing Amundsen. The second is that he has the benefit of more than fifty years of historical hindsight, which makes it easy for him to criticize Scott for apparent incompetence. He's also not above fabricating so-called "facts" if doing so helps him further his cause of tearing down the Scott legend (I'm thinking of his more or less unfounded allegations that Kathleen Scott had an affair with Nansen). The truth regarding Scott and Amundsen and their respective expeditions is naturally somewhat more complicated. The Last Place on Earth is not a bad book. It's not necessarily even bad history. But it is revisionist, and heavily skewed, written by a man with a clear agenda. If you want a more fair, balanced, and compassionate view, read Diana Preston's A First Rate Tragedy. Read the Scott chapters of Francis Spofford's I May Be Some Time. And read Scott's and Amundsen's own published records of the events. Because let's face it: nobody knows what really happened better than the men to whom it actually happened. And they left their own perfectly adequate accounts.

I recently read "Scott's Last Expedition", the edited version of his diaries from his South Pole expedition. This left me interested but unfulfilled: I wanted to learn more about Amundsen and the context for both expeditions, and to get more analysis of the bald facts as related in Scott's diaries. So I turned to Huntford's "The Last Place on Earth".

I was not disappointed. Huntford narrates the entire lives of both Amundsen and Scott, with edifying discursions on Nansen, Shackleton, and other Polar explorers. Huntford knows Norwegian and thus was able to consult primary sources for Amundsen's expedition directly; he provides many excerpts from the letters and diaries of both British and Norwegian expedition members. He also reveals some of the omissions in the edited version of Scott's diaries.

As a minor quibble, Huntford only rarely gives full dates, so that I found myself frequently having to page back a considerable way to remind myself which year or even which month it was. An appendixed chronology would have been immeasurably helpful.

As other reviewers have noted, the author is highly critical of Scott -- occasionally unfairly so, as when he notes that Scott's first depot journey brought "a ton of supplies not quite to 80 degrees South" where Amundsen's party had "moved three tons another two degrees of latitude closer to the Pole", omitting to mention that Amundsen started about a degree farther south than Scott. But from the evidence Huntford adduces, even without his interpretations, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Scott was criminally unprepared, negligent, and generally incompetent. It is not as though he had no information about what he would be facing -- his previous expedition encountered nearly all the same problems, but he seems not to have learned anything from it. Huntford shows how Scott's diaries and their careful editing combine to portray Scott in a much more favorable light than he deserves -- a case of the loser writing the history books.

Huntford also reveals what might charitably be called "traditional" attitudes toward women. For example, speaking of Kathleen Bruce, Scott's future wife, Huntford says, "She was a predatory female; more predatory than usual, that is." Fortunately, since nearly all the principal figures in the book are male, this only surfaces occasionally, as when Huntford describes Amundsen as having "an almost feminine sensitivity for the undertones and cross-currents on which a leader has to play".

Despite its flaws, "The Last Place on Earth" should be among the first books you read on Polar exploration, or true-life adventure in general. Once the race for the Pole was on, I found it as hard to put down as any fictional thriller.

There are many reasons to read this book. For one, it is very well written. It is equally well-researched, and although it talks about events that happened 90 years ago, every modern explorer or wanna-be explorer should read it. Huntford's book "The last Place on Earth" brilliantly reveals the true story of the race to the South Pole between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott. In terms of Scott it is a myth-shattering account that tells the time-less story of arrogance, unpreparedness in the face of danger and lack of respect for the forces of nature that ultimately lead to inevitable desaster and failure. And if anybody thinks that this theme is outdated, please read the stories of the recent tragedies on Everest. Huntford analyzes very carefully the fundamentally different approaches that went into the preparation and execution of both expeditions and lead to the so different outcomes: success and safe return for the Norwegians, death and suffering for the British. Huntford finds the roots for Scott's arrogant and at the same time helpless approach in Edwardian society. He also shows us the very different situation that Amundsen was coming from. In spite of the large amount of detail presented, the book reads very, very well, almost like an adventure novel. Huntford has been criticized for his sharp bashing of Scott and his myth, but after reading the details and doing some further research on both expeditions I have to say that it was time that Amundsen got the full respect he deserved and the truth about Scott, the "hero" was told.

Skip the preparation section unless you are really interested in how many tons of coal or potatoes Nansen took along. Skip the final section by Sverdrup on his return from the ice unless you have trouble sleeping at night. The only part really worth reading is the tale of Nansen and his partner 'walking' home (close to home anyway) over the ice. Nansen wrote this from the comfort of his home but still has a casual attitude to this amazing 'walk'.

I share the wonder of others at Nansen's achievements in advancing the art of arctic exploration many important steps forward. This pioneer recognized that the "North Pole" was neither frozen land nor solid ice but rather, slowly moving ice. Nansen designed his ship the "Fram" to not only withstand the movement of ice but to use it to his advantage. He planned for several years of drift in arctic ice with no hope of rescue if things went badly. Before his voyage, he was dismissed (as other explorers before him) as a reckless nut case. On the trip, he occupied his crew with scientific study, ship maintenance, and occasional celebrations and treats. Nansen grew impatient with his plan, left the Fram to the care of his crew, and journeyed with one other crew member on a double-dogsled slog for the Pole. The two men mushed until blocked (300 miles from the Pole); heading home, they got lost when their watches stopped and they could no longer orient themselves on the map, GPS being unavailable at the time ;-). The two groups of explorers simultaneously arrived home by separate eventful journeys. This is a remarkable story of successes and misses.

"Farthest North" combines Nansen's post-trip narratives of events with many verbatim daily journal entries. These passages, as in most diaries, are understandably highly repetitive and at times lack focus. (It's easy enough to skim until finding something more engaging.) I found Nansen's descriptions of the polar darkness lasting many weeks each winter and its effects on morale particularly compelling. Also well recounted was the nerve-wracking grinding and pressure of the ice upon the "Fram" with the underlying danger of shipwreck in the Arctic. I was also moved by Nansen's bitter frustrations at the forward-then-back progress north and at his exhaustion trying to move dog sleds across uneven tundra. The map of the journey is hard to read or to match with the text, unfortunately. Conversely, the trip's black and white photos that match faces to names add much to the book. This edition of "Farthest North" was abridged from an original two-volume set. I for one did not, however, want more text to read and would have appreciated additional editing. Even abridged and even as an historical document, this remains a very long book.

One caution not mentioned in other reviews here to date: attitudes of Nansen towards wilderness and wildlife will likely bother some readers. Nansen's view of an animal could be characterized as, "Shoot it... unless it's a sled dog we need... at the moment." Polar bears (including cubs), whales, fish, walrus, seals, birds, as well as non-wild sled dogs and puppies are killed frequently, every few pages on average, and without guilt (with the exception of a few favorite sled dogs whose demise did bother Nansen). One can rationalize a need for hunting because this well-stocked crew had to find additional food in a place where it couldn't be grown. But at other times, the killing seemed for diversion or because, in the case of the dogs, supplies were running short, and a faithful but hungry sled dog had one final service to perform for its comrades or master. In August 1894, Nansen noted with wonder and delight that he'd finally seen three "rare and mysterious" Arctic Ross' gulls, a species he'd been searching for. With no expression of irony balancing his happiness at his sighting, he gunned each one down, apparently ensuring that the species would be even more rarely observed in the future. These small birds, the size of snipe, would have had little food value. To readers who are sensitive to graphic descriptions of hunting that in today's culture may seem senseless, or to raw exploitation of animals for human needs, this book may be hard to take. Dog-training techniques are also notably unenlightened. One also misses crew attention to any need to carry out what was carried in to the wilderness. But these are objections in the context of current environmentalist values towards animals and wilderness-- values that have only come into prominence in recent years. The essential point to remember is that "Farthest North" reflects the attitudes of the era in which it was written and of the people who participated in this historic venture. As such, it offers a point-of-view and a look at cultural values of the 1890s that could not be matched by a modern third-person account of the trip. "Farthest North" is not the way we would choose to travel there now. To readers who can keep this perspective in mind, and can in fact appreciate the contrast and change in attitude towards wild places over the last century, the book is a journey they will be glad they made.

If you are a fan of Arctic and Antarctic adventure stories then this is one you don't want to miss. The great explorer Fridtjof Nansen left Norway in 1893 on the Fram, a ship especially designed to withstand the pressure of the frozen northern sea. Nansen's intention was to drift, locked in the ice, to the North Pole. Eventually, he determines that his theory of drifting to his destination will not be possible, so he and another crewman leave the ship and continue towards the Pole by dogsled. The Fram continues drifting in the ice and Nansen and his partner have no hope of returning to the ship. The story unfolds over a period of three years and you can't turn the pages fast enough to find out what happens to Nansen and the crew of the Fram.