Description

The explorer’s classic account of adventure and survival in the Antarctic—with photos from the journey and color images of polar landscapes and animal life.

In 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton announced an ambitious plan to lead the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition—the first trek across Antarctica from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the South Pole. Shackleton’s third expedition would be filled with adventure—and fraught with peril.

South is the remarkable tale of that ill-fated expedition as told in Shackleton’s own words, and illustrated here with the photography of expedition photographer Frank Hurley, as well as modern color imagery of the fauna and stunning vistas the men encountered. Their story begins on the eve of World War I, when the ship Endurance departed from England with Shackleton and his team of six men. The plan was to travel 1,800 miles across the icy continent from the Atlantic side, while a second team, aboard the ship Aurora, would reach the Pacific side from Tasmania and lay out supply depots for the advancing team.

As the Endurance approached the continent, however, it became hopelessly locked in an ice floe, beginning a series of travails including ice-covered mountainous islands, harrowing days in a life raft in hurricane-force winds, untested overland routes into the vast unknown, and more.

South is the true story of a thrilling polar expedition—and never before has Shackleton’s lively prose been so extensively illustrated with such extraordinary images.