Four Against the Arctic: Library Edition

Rating:
Summary: The Title Is Misleading
Review: I'm glad I was able to borrow this book from the library because if I had bought the book I would have demanded a refund. The author devotes very little space covering the trials of the four survivors and devotes page after page discussing how he researched the book. Here is an example of what you must plow through:
"Through the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department at Harvard, I contacted a graduate student named Julia Beakman Chadaga, whose area of specialization as she pusrsued her PH.D happened to be the eighteenth century. ... Short with staight brown hair, parted in the middle, hanging loose about her face, Julia had brown eyes and delicate features. Though she looked twenty-two, she was about to turn thirty,... Julia had been born in Minsk, so her first language was Russian. After her parents moved to New York when she was eight, she learned English like every other kid in public school."

WHO CARES? I suspect most readers, like me, wanted to read how the four survived for six years in the arctic.
The author also devotes much too much space criticizing those who researched this sory of survival before him. I found this annoying and very unprofessional. In short, don't buy this book unless you're interested in reading about how he did his research. I gave up after page 75 which was about one-third of the way through. A more appropriate title would have been "How I Researched the Story of Four Men Stranded for Six Years In the Arctic."

Rating:
Summary: Pompous Author - and boring
Review: I'm sure the tale of survival is interesting, but I'll find another book to tell me that story. David Roberts is more interested in telling you what a great researcher he is. He repeatedly tells you how "poor" his foreign language skills are (German, Norwegian, Russian) and yet he then proceeds to tell you how, with his meager knowledge, he managed to translate just as well as his professionally translated text. I've read probably 40 or 50 Arctic/Antarctic books filled with daily trivial entries, minute details, weather and longitude/lattitude readings - and I'll read thru days of that before I pick this book up again. Couldn't get past page 97. Then I skimmed through to find where he gets off his soapbox about his skills, and gets back to the story - but it was too carefully hidden. I understand that he was trying to weave in how the mystery was uncovered, and that can be fascinating too - I thank God for historians and authors who do and have done that - but Roberts just doesn't have the skill to do that without coming off as arrogant.

Rating:
Summary: Not enough info for a book
Review: It's amazing the story of four Russian sailors' survival on the sub-arctic island of Svalbard for six years isn't better known, considering it's probably the most amazing feat of arctic survival in the long and checkered history of arctic and antarctic exploration.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with many of the other reviewers here that the "signal to noise ratio" of the book is pretty low; there really isn't that much information about the sailors' story, and most of the book is really about the extensive research the author did and his own personal journey to discover the facts of the story. Unfortunately, very little real information seems to be available and the result shows in the final book.

There is no doubt that the author went to considerable trouble and did very thorough and extensive research to glean what little information was available, and the author certainly deserves credit for that. As a former researcher myself I understand the fascination of doing research and the thrill of discovery in ferreting out all the facts, but the end result here unfortunately is still pretty thin.

The author also spends too much time finding fault with the French academic's style who originally interviewed the sailors, considering that Roberts's style itself is a little too ponderous and grandiloquent at times, especially about pretty trivial matters.

On the positive side, however, I did learn a few interesting details of how the sailors managed to survive for the time they did, and I enjoyed that. For example, they were able to build a wooden hut from the driftwood that floats up on Svalbard's rocky shores. Svalbard itself has no trees, but what it does have is literally tons of driftwood. This is due to the prevailing currents which cause the logs that float out to the sea from Russian rivers to end up on the coast of the island. The sailors also had to kill several polar bears. That's probably the most exciting fact in the book although nothing else is known about it.

If you do decide to buy the book the best way to read it would be to skip over the sections about the author, the French professor, and most of the details of the research and just read the passages about the sailors, because there is some interesting information and material there. This would have made a fine magazine article but there just isn't enough information to justify a book-length treatment as the author has done here.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing account of man against the elements
Review: Svalbard island is about as far north as you can get and still be on land in the arctic. Its a barren wasteland, a treeless landscape festooned with Polar bears and Reindeer(how exactly did the reindeer get to the island?). In the mid 1700s a Russian ship, blown off course, found itself stuck in the ice near the island. 4 men went ashore and when they returned to the boat it had disappeared. These 4 men would spend the next 6 years in this wasteland trying top survive against the elements.

This epic adventure story is told very well by the author, who journeyed to the island to understand the struggle himself. The author tried to understand how these men made the most rudimentary tools, like a bow and arrow from driftwood. These 4 men had many run ins with Polar Bears and somehow survived.
An extraordinary adventure tale. An easy informative read. Half the book details the travels of the 4 men on the island while the other half is an investigative report by the author, exploring the village where the men came from and the relics that still exist of their journey and their life on the island.

Rating:
Summary: Should be Titled: Find the Hidden Story
Review: This narrative is an excellent account of how people can survive in the face of a challange. Unfortunately, the author details the actual writing of the tale much more effectively than dramatizing the task of wintering the arctic. The actual story, (which is hard to find in the book), and the photography would have made a very interesting cover story of a National Geographic. What is ultimately presented turns out to be a mediocre story of how the auther did toil to research the information in his book. But that was not about what I had wanted to read.