The Endurance

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 was never before 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 canisters 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; thereafter he captured some of the most unforgettable images of the struggle with a pocket camera and three rolls of Kodak film.