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Rating: 
Summary: Admiral Byrd Goes Bipolar
Review: How low can it go. That's the key question about the thermometer - an average of about -60 degrees - and Admiral Richard Byrd's mental state as he struggled to survive when he was, by choice, stranded "Alone" near the South Pole in 1934. It is a rather amazing true tale of physical and psychic endurance. Admiral Byrd planned to set up an "Advance Base" (a weather station in the inland area of Antarctica) that was separated from the rest of his exploration team at Little America by 123 miles. For six months of the Antarctic winter, there would be no way for a rescue team to reach Advance Base. Almost unbelievably, he decides to man the weather station by himself. The plan had been for three men to operate Advance Base, but he opts to go it alone because some supplies were lost and - the real reason - he wants the spiritual experience of being by himself. Not a smart idea. Unless you're a bear with a whole lot of white fur, sitting on your duff during a bitter winter at the South Pole is not Club Med, South. As the fantastically frigid, dark and brutal winter sets in, Byrd discovers that it really is cold outside, and inside as well thanks to a faulty furnace that leaks carbon monoxide. He blames the latter for the deterioration of his mental facilities and becomes all but immobilized by what appears to be, in today's psychobabble, severe clinical depression. The resulting tale of mind over a continent of murderously icy, windy matter is eloquent and well-told. Admiral Byrd's courage and perseverance is inspiring. But his judgment, which got him into this polar predicament in the first place, is less than zero.
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Summary: audio worth the time to listen
Review: i don't often listen to books on tape but this is an excellent reading of the book! if it is unavailable that is a shame. try to borrow a copy through your library if you can't purchase one.
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Summary: Stunning!
Review: If you are looking for a book on an Antarctic adventure, perhaps there are better choices to be made. But if you want to understand the struggle and hardship of being physically and mentally isolated, or experience the terror of dealing with an unknown adversary, then I can recommend no better book than this one. Byrd takes what could have been an extremely dry subject and makes it read like a classic adventure novel. And it's all the more exciting because it's true!
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Summary: This is stamina
Review: It never ceases to amaze me how far people will go when they have made up their minds.
This is a story about Admiral Byrd who sets up camp in Antarctica and decides to spend the winter there in a small hut in the ice. It's a story about how he manages to get from day to day, both psychologically and physically. Apart from being slightly eccentric and brave, he shows amazing self-control as even when he is close to dying he still decides to go on instead of calling for help.
It is a nice story, well readable and enjoyable.
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Summary: Alone
Review: Richard E. Byrd's "ALONE" gets off to a slow start, but as soon as Byrd is left alone, 123 miles from the nearest humans at Little America, during the Antarctic winter, the real drama begins. In 1934, long before science ascertained the real effects of constant darkness on the human psyche, Byrd, in this autobiographical expose, makes it very clear how the lack of sunlight, isolation, and carbon monoxide poisoning can push a man to his utmost mental and physical limits. To top it off, Byrd has a writing style so descriptive and soulful that it makes the reader feel as if he were right there with him as an invisible observer. Anyone who likes to explore the dormant, but always present, dark recesses of the human mind has to read this book. As a result, Byrd unintentionally takes us also on an exploration of the mind, not just the brutal conditions of the Antarctic. Great book.
Rating:
Summary: Alone
Review: Richard E. Byrd's "ALONE" gets off to a slow start, but as soon as Byrd is left alone, 123 miles from the nearest humans at Little America, during the Antarctic winter, the real drama begins. In 1934, long before science ascertained the real effects of constant darkness on the human psyche, Byrd, in this autobiographical expose, makes it very clear how the lack of sunlight, isolation, and carbon monoxide poisoning can push a man to his utmost mental and physical limits. To top it off, Byrd has a writing style so descriptive and soulful that it makes the reader feel as if he were right there with him as an invisible observer. Anyone who likes to explore the dormant, but always present, dark recesses of the human mind has to read this book. As a result, Byrd unintentionally takes us also on an exploration of the mind, not just the brutal conditions of the Antarctic. Great book.
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Summary: Sometimes it's good to judge a book by its cover
Review: The exquisite cover and beautiful print of this edition, published by Kodansha in 1995, are a suitable frame for this wonderful book. Its strength lies both in the quality of the prose, which flows naturally, at times poetically, and in the fact that this is a personal account of a true story. The pain is real, the suspense is real. It tells the story of six long and dark months, in the winter of 1934, which Richard Byrd spent alone in Antarctica. He struggles to survive the hardships of the Antarctic winter itself, the diffuculty of being alone, and also the physical and mental sickness that nearly overcome him, illness caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. If there is a flaw in this book it is that one wishes that Byrd could have gone deeper into the psychological and philosophical themes he brings up. Still, it is a very moving account indeed.
Rating:
Summary: Sometimes it's good to judge a book by its cover
Review: The exquisite cover and beautiful print of this edition, published by Kodansha in 1995, are a suitable frame for this wonderful book. Its strength lies both in the quality of the prose, which flows naturally, at times poetically, and in the fact that this is a personal account of a true story. The pain is real, the suspense is real. It tells the story of six long and dark months, in the winter of 1934, which Richard Byrd spent alone in Antarctica. He struggles to survive the hardships of the Antarctic winter itself, the diffuculty of being alone, and also the physical and mental sickness that nearly overcome him, illness caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. If there is a flaw in this book it is that one wishes that Byrd could have gone deeper into the psychological and philosophical themes he brings up. Still, it is a very moving account indeed.
Rating: 
Summary: "Alone" with his ego
Review: The mettle and grace of the Victorian gentleman: Robert Falcon Scott, on his 1911/12 polar trek, endured incredible hardship, crushing disappointment, and approaching death -- and wrote it all down in a journal as inspiring as it is heartbreaking. In "Alone", a much better-equipped Admiral Richard E. Byrd suffers similar travails a quarter-century later, and offers up a mundane narrative of egotism, complaint and self-justification.
That Antarctic exploration has undergone a sea change since the days of Scott and Shackleton becomes apparent as Admiral Byrd faces his first crisis: the loss of "two indispensable items": his alarm clock and cookbook. Not even instructions radioed in from Oscar of the Waldorf himself can salvage flapjacks made without that cookbook. Byrd plods along, making mistakes the average boy scout would avoid, such as wandering off and getting lost. And we are left to wonder why he had not learned Morse code, his only means of communication.
The details of daily life are interesting. And the awful, majestic beauty of the Antarctic night shines through it all, despite the half-baked psychoanalysis and philosophy which Byrd ladles over everything. ("The past was gone, and the future would adduce its own appropriate liquidation", he sums up at one point.) But he fails to inspire, to ennoble, to evoke all mankind. It is all about him.
Antarctica has been blessed with chroniclers of encompassing vision, poetic insight, and literary ability. Admiral Byrd is not one of them. Read "Scott's Last Expedition" instead.
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Summary: Courageous
Review: The stories of people who went through terrible situations can become hagiography. The worse torture one went through and survived, the tougher one is, right?
I expected Admiral Richard Byrd's story of his struggle with illness and the elements in a weather outpost in Antarctica, over a hundred miles from the nearest other multicellular organism, to follow this pattern. Byrd could be forgiven for slapping himself on the back for having lived through such travails, not only because it really would take a remarkable man, but also because he had to carefully tend to his reputation, which was essential to securing funding for his exploratory expeditions. But Alone, written only four years after the events described and while Byrd's future career was still an issue, is a more remarkable document than I expected.
Besides describing the remarkable routine of his outpost and how one could live there, where temperatures routinely dipped under negative forty degrees Fahrenheit, and besides describing the agony Byrd suffered from an insidious carbon monoxide leak in the very stove that he depended on to stay warm enough to survive, Byrd also writes what puts his reputation at risk. He describes with a surprising lack of defensiveness his mental breakdown. Over sixty awful days, Byrd changed from the intrepid explorer who wanted to spend nine months alone in the Antarctic winter just for the experience to an emaciated, pain-wracked man who could not bear to stick to his original resolution to forbid a dangerous rescue attempt.
Like I said, merely telling how he endured pain could only make Byrd look more manly. Tough guys endure pain. But by telling the extent to which the pain unmanned him (in his own turn-of-the-century Virginian mind), Byrd gives a memoir that is as remarkable for its honesty as it is for the fascinating environment in which his adventure takes place. Letting this book be published during his lifetime is perhaps as great an act of courage as that which he showed during the events of this extraordinary and fascinating book.
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