I’m in Antarctica with a polar explorer

David Grann is an American investigative journalist and one of my favourite non-fiction writers. I have read books by him about a conspiracy against Native American people (see my review here), a notable shipwreck (my review is here), an expedition into the rainforest (see here) and other quirky stories (see here). The White Darkness is a book that I ordered from a secondhand book dealer because I didn’t have it and I wanted to read another book by this author. It’s actually a very thin book – I read it in an evening, but it’s full of pictures which enhance the text.

This book is set in Antarctica, which isn’t strictly a country, but it’s a large area of the globe with few, transient, inhabitants which has been the subject of quite a lot of writing so I am including it in this challenge, even though it’s not a part of the world that I particularly want to visit. I have quite a few books about polar exploration by land and sea at both the North and the South poles and I find them interesting, even if I have no desire to replicate the experiences.

This book is a short biography of Henry Worsley who made several trips to Antarctica earlier this century, often following in the steps of his hero, the explorer Ernest Shackleton. Worsley was a British soldier, a member of the SAS regiment, and a man who felt the desire to test himself to the limit. This book is mainly about an expedition he made to retrace Shackleton’s unfinished journey across the continent on foot. Worsley was descended from a member of the original expedition and so too were the companions on his trek. The book uses his audio and written diaries to give the reader a feel for what it is like to undertake such a journey but also an insight into the man and what drives him. The book also covers two more expeditions made by Worsley and also the way that he felt torn between his family and his need to undertake such quests. The book includes contributions from the family so that we can see things from their point of view as well.

There’s quite a lot of detail missing in this book such as how Worsley raised the money for his expeditions and what other explorers thought about him. I think that this may be because the book was written in cooperation with the family. However much this book tells us that Worsley was brave and a great leader it appears to me that on occasions he was selfish and that he was so driven that he might have been a nightmare to live with – other books about explorers go into more details about what sort of personality it takes to do this sort of thing.

A peculiarity about this book is that was written by an American about a British subject so the author feels the need, on occasion, to explain aspects of British life which are, of course, patently obvious to a British reader. It jarred occasionally. I could also have done with someone telling me in what units temperature is given in the book – degrees below freezing are very different in Centigrade than they are in Fahrenheit !

I liked this book, even though it is short. I had never heard of Worsley before but this book fits nicely into my collection of books about polar, and other, exploration. It still doesn’t make me want to undertake such a journey myself, though !

Has anyone a book to recommend on a similar theme or a book set in Antarctica which is not about exploration ? Recommendations welcome in the comments.