Product Description
In 1933 Antarctica was essentially unexplored. Admiral Richard Byrd launched his Second Expedition to chart the southernmost continent, primarily relying on the muscle power of dog teams and their drivers who skied or ran beside the loaded sledges as they traveled. Stuart Paine was a dog driver, radio operator, and navigator on the fifty-six-man expedition, and his diaries represent the only published contemporary account written from the inside of the Second Expedition. Featuring previously unpublished photographs and illustrations, Paine's tale is one of the most compelling stories in polar history, surpassing other accounts with its immediacy and adventure as it captures the majesty and mystery of the untouched Antarctic.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 1 review)

those were harder times than these!

During the Great Depression, Stu Paine signed on as a dogsled driver for Admiral Byrd in his attempt to reach the South Pole. It was Paine and his companions who set the record for the "farthest South" any American had yet gone. Now his daughter has edited his diaries for publication, with lots of contemporary photos. The result is a book that is raw and real. Paine's diaries have given me more of a picture of Antarctica than a dozen books I've read about that vast, cold land.

For example, he wrote on August 14, 1934: "Nature, strong + big, has let human ambitions contaminate her realm only at great cost. But it is only for a while -- We will return. Other expeditions will come + go, hanging like flies on an edge of a dish, to the edge of Antarctica, here to-day, gone tomorrow. And all the while the blizzards come, the temperature sinks to the seventies +eighties [below zero F], the seals + penguins + gulls come +go, the overwhelming forces of the ice pressing down from the plateau will go on, tremendous, grand + awful. How few see it -- what a pity, a land of inspiration and to most people a land of monotony + terror. As in no other place, peace holds sway, the peace of God perhaps --"

A great book for Arctic and Antarctic fans and also for those who love reading diaries to get a glimpse of the person who wrote them.

July 04, 2007

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