The definitive biography of a legendary adventurer.
A world-renowned explorer and prolific writer turns his attention to Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922), a giant of the heroic age of polar exploration, with entirely satisfying results.
Already a biographer of Robert Falcon Scott, it seemed inevitable that Fiennes would take on Shackleton, who dealt successfully with disaster—a unique trait among 19th- and early-20th-century British explorers. Born to an Anglo-Irish family, Shackleton yearned for adventure from childhood. After years as a merchant seaman, he pulled strings to join Scott’s 1901-1903 Discovery Expedition to Antarctica, where he, Scott, and another engaged in a brutal trek toward the South Pole that reached nearly 82 degrees south, a record, before they turned back. Evacuated because of debility, he returned to England before the others and became a national celebrity for his charisma and speaking skills as well as his accomplishments. Yearning to make his own mark, in 1909, he organized an expedition that, after unspeakable suffering, turned back about 100 miles from the South Pole. Fiennes emphasizes that this decision showed intelligence as well as courage because, starving and ill, everyone would certainly have died if they continued south. Fiennes excels in describing Shackleton’s apotheosis. Leading an expedition to cross Antarctica, in 1915, his ship became trapped in ice; nine months later, the ice crushed it. After months drifting on ice floes, he led his men to an isolated island and then piloted a small boat across 800 miles of stormy seas to a whaling station on South Georgia Island to organize a rescue. Having literally walked in Shackleton’s footsteps, Fiennes is uniquely qualified to describe his experiences, analyze his mistakes, and contradict other biographers. While scholars almost universally condemn Shackleton (and Scott) for eschewing skis, Fiennes explains that skis are a hindrance when dragging a heavy sledge. For those inclined to disagree, he points out that he came to this conclusion dragging his own sledge across Antarctica in 1993.
The definitive biography of a legendary adventurer.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-879-4
Page Count: 452
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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