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Summary: Great history--Huntford had no ax to grind against Scott
Review: I'm pretty limited in what I read--Arctic and Antarctic books and nothing else. I've definately read more than the average Joe on these subjects. This book is wonderful. I have read most of the reviews posted here. I have to strongly disagree with those many who think Huntford went into this with the idea of bashing Scott. Huntford used a tremendous amount of 1st hand source material in his research. He is just stating what he found. The truth is hard. The fact that Scott was a selfish oaf and Amundson was a gifted explorer (with flaws of his own) offends some who have no response except to try and discredit Roland Huntford, the author. It is the craze now to show and write about the leadership qualities of Shackelton. Amundson's were no less brilliant and I'm at a loss to explain why he isn't lauded more on his contributions to leadership. I'm not in favor of bashing people as I believe we should look for the good and ignore the bad. In this case, there is so much overwhelming evidence to support a less-than-romantic view of Scott that it is too hard to ignore the bad as that is about all there was. Even Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Scott's best admirer who was the one who actually found Scott dead in his tent and wrote admiringly about Scott in "The Worst Journey in the World" tells a different story in his own diary, saying Scott had "little sense of humour" and critisizing Scott for launching into "a state of high nervous excitement bordering on collapse". No one had much good to say about Scott in their private journals. Whereas, Amundson (and Shackelton and Nansen) all had great admiration from those who served under him. Roland Huntford does give praise to Scott on occasion. Amundson is not all good and efficient either. With all his planning and foresight he still forgets the most elementary items such as a snow shovel and the nautical almanac for 1912. He also sends the dogs out before they are properly conditioned and thus they suffer bleeding paws. Each has flaws and talents. In the realm of polar exploration and leaders of men, Scott has more flaws and Amundson has more talents. This is what Huntford shows by nothing more than researching and quoting primary source material. This book is great, well researched history.
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Summary: A Brilliant Psychological and Adventure Thriller
Review: I will keep it short since I am sure that others have said it better than I can. This book is a masterpiece. Of course, there is all the drama and excitement of the "race" to the south pole, described in vivid language. But what I think is most profound about the book was the absolutely riveting portrayal of the two "racers" with vastly different personalities and psychologies. Just a great book! In fact, this book is, in my opinion, the best by this author.
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Summary: Huntford's book is Revisionist and Biased
Review: There are two important facts to remember about The Last Place on Earth. The first is that its author, Roland Huntford, comes to it with the clear agenda of debunking Scott and lionizing Amundsen. The second is that he has the benefit of more than fifty years of historical hindsight, which makes it easy for him to criticize Scott for apparent incompetence. He's also not above fabricating so-called "facts" if doing so helps him further his cause of tearing down the Scott legend (I'm thinking of his more or less unfounded allegations that Kathleen Scott had an affair with Nansen). The truth regarding Scott and Amundsen and their respective expeditions is naturally somewhat more complicated. The Last Place on Earth is not a bad book. It's not necessarily even bad history. But it is revisionist, and heavily skewed, written by a man with a clear agenda. If you want a more fair, balanced, and compassionate view, read Diana Preston's A First Rate Tragedy. Read the Scott chapters of Francis Spofford's I May Be Some Time. And read Scott's and Amundsen's own published records of the events. Because let's face it: nobody knows what really happened better than the men to whom it actually happened. And they left their own perfectly adequate accounts.
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Summary: Facinating account of how a looser can write history
Review: I was brought up on British history of the thin red, the stiff upper lip, defiant to the death in the face of overwhelming odds. The story of Scott's polar expedition was always a big part of that history. It is fascinating to see a legend that had stood for decades so comprehensively destroyed. I had always thought that Amudsen was the better explorer of the two, he made the trip much faster, had much less trouble and lived to tell the tale. The only trouble he had was one of his men got a toothache on the return from the South Pole. What I didn't realise was just how incompetent and uncaring about his men Scott was, and how much his many deficiencies were covered up after his death. Scott's leadership on both his expeditions was a neverending catalogue of failures and blunders which he blamed on his subordinates. His last letter to the public, written when he starving to death, blamed his problems on Captain Oates for becoming sick - everything else had been in perfect order, except for the shortage of fuel. Even this was avoidable, leaking fuel cans had been a problem on Scott's first expedition but he didn't do anything about it, while Amudsen's fuel dumps hadn't leaked when they were found fifty years later. It isn't often that loosers get to write their own history and Scott and his apologists got away with it for more than 60 years.It is easy to see why the British lost their empire when a failure like Scott is turned into a national icon - he didn't stand for courage and leadership at all, quite the reverse - he sacrificed his men on a mission that had no merit and virtually no chance of survival. The man wasn't a hero, he was a moral coward who lead his men into a disaster and was ready to abandon them when it happened. It looks suspiciously like Scott abandoned Petty Officer Evans but changed his mind and went back for him (Evans died that night). Scott's account of the death of Captain Oates also looks contrived. Oates only went on the Polar party because Scott ordered him and he wrote that he had developed a great dislike for Scott. It is pretty unlikely that he said the ultra British things to Scott that Scott claimed in his diary. Given Scott's charactor deficiencies the most plausible explanation is that Oates suicided to end his suffering and Scott wrote an account for posterity (he had already conceded to himself that they were all going to die) that excused him for causing the death of a fellow officer.
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Summary: History at its Best.
Review: Roland Huntford is to be commended for his incredible effort in researching this subject matter, although the first part of the book dragged a bit. Huntford goes into great detail on the personal background of Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen--almost too much detail. But it was worth slogging through because it provides tremendous background and understanding on how and why the Scott Expedition came to its tragic end, and Amundsen went on to claim the prize of first to the South Pole. The reality is that it'd be worth reading through a brick wall to get at the gem in this book: Scott's diary. Scott and four men die only eleven miles from salvation on their return trip from the South Pole. Demoralized by the discovery that they'd been beaten there by Amundsen a month earlier, Scott's party trudges across the ice toward home base pulling their man-sledges, slowly freezing and starving to death. When their bodies are discovered later, Scott's diary is found intact. It details graphically yet with typical British understatement the horrific conditions the men endured and ultimately succumbed to. When fellow explorer Oates, whose frostbit black and dead feet are slowing the team down, selflessly sacrifices himself for the good of the party by shedding his coat and wandering out of the tent into the howling storm, never to be seen again, we are in the tent with these unbelievably brave, stubborn, foolish, tragic heroes. This book delivers maximum reader impact. The book provides another important service, which is to chronicle the brilliant achievement of Roald Amundsen, who won the race to the Pole but was largely overshadowed by Scott. Huntford plays the Scott and Amundsen characters against one another brilliantly, highlighting their differences, motivations, and foibles. In the early 1900s the South Pole was the Holy Grail of Earth-bound exploration, considered to be the last place yet reached by Man (excluding the peak of Everest). This is the tale of the men who raced to get there. Finances, weather, national pride, equipment, strategy, motivations, mistakes; Huntford covers it all. This is history at its best. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.
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Summary: A management manual for success
Review: My comments refer to the original publication and I have not read this current edition. The story of the race to the pole is not just about grit and determination it is about management. This book has to be one of the best management manuals available and I wish every upper manager would read it and take in the principles of planning and how to deal with people. Amundsen knew how to manage and Scott didn't! As with "Shackleton" Roland Huntford has put together a detailed insight into the two explorers. Don't read this book if you just want a quick summary.
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Summary: Read this book! Let the race begin!
Review: In this riveting account of polar exploration, Roland Huntford retraces the steps of two explorers as they race for the ultimate conquest: The South Pole. On one hand you have the British, inexperienced, under-prepared, yet full of pride. Led by Robert Scott, their jouney might have been more appropriately titled, "101 things NOT to do on a polar expedition." On the other hand you have Norway's Roald Amundsen, exacting, tactful, and full of ambition. What follows is a gripping, compelling, often humorous, yet tragic story of two men's intertwining destinies. Huntford goes to great lengths to capture the personalities and thoughts behind the men, in what might be one of the great de-bunking biographies of all time. This is an adventure story of the highest caliber and should not be missed! If you have already read and enjoyed this highly readable book, I would also recommend "Endurance" by Alfred Lansing, "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer, and "Voyage of the Narwhale" by Andrea Barrett.
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Summary: an absolute must-read
Review: There are many reasons to read this book. For one, it is very well written. It is equally well-researched, and although it talks about events that happened 90 years ago, every modern explorer or wanna-be explorer should read it. Huntford's book "The last Place on Earth" brilliantly reveals the true story of the race to the South Pole between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott. In terms of Scott it is a myth-shattering account that tells the time-less story of arrogance, unpreparedness in the face of danger and lack of respect for the forces of nature that ultimately lead to inevitable desaster and failure. And if anybody thinks that this theme is outdated, please read the stories of the recent tragedies on Everest. Huntford analyzes very carefully the fundamentally different approaches that went into the preparation and execution of both expeditions and lead to the so different outcomes: success and safe return for the Norwegians, death and suffering for the British. Huntford finds the roots for Scott's arrogant and at the same time helpless approach in Edwardian society. He also shows us the very different situation that Amundsen was coming from. In spite of the large amount of detail presented, the book reads very, very well, almost like an adventure novel. Huntford has been criticized for his sharp bashing of Scott and his myth, but after reading the details and doing some further research on both expeditions I have to say that it was time that Amundsen got the full respect he deserved and the truth about Scott, the "hero" was told.
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Summary: There is no substitute for knowing what you're doing!
Review: That is the theme of this gripping recreation/analysis of the great Scott/Amundson race to the South Pole. For decades Scott's fatal trek bestowed a posthumous immortality on him, while Amundson became a footnote, even though he was the winner. This book corrects this historical misjudgment. Basically Huntford states that Scott deserved to die--this is not his personal verdict but the verdict that the Pole itself cast upon Scott. He was poorly organized, his plans were vague,he was rigid in his views--he learned nothing from his first visit nor from the memoirs of those who also had made the visit, he was a poor leader of men and highly self-defensive. While Amundsen planned his campaign like Hitchcock made one of his movies: the whole thing was fully conceptualized in his mind down to the smallest detail before the first frame was taken; the journey itself was simply the materialization of the mind's idea. It is hard to feel much sympathy for Scott, and the author perhaps lets his disgust at his incompetence and the waste of life it caused color his presentation, but so well argued is this book that Scott is unlikely to rise again from the ashes Huntford has made of his reputation. This book is a classic, resurrecting one reputation and burying another, full of shrewd insights on men, leadership, climate and struggle. And it is a gripping, compelling page-turner to boot.
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Summary: Axes enough, please...
Review: To those that felt a hatchet job was done to Robert Falcon Scott by this book, I would have to take issue. Huntford takes a hatchet to the attitudes of Victorian/Edwardian England. He points out that Shackelton (a man Huntford admires) had the self-same faults. Fortunately for Shackelton, he was more of a leader, and certainly cooler under pressure than Scott. I think Huntford is also reacting to the lionization of Scott. For many years, Scott WAS the discoverer of the South Pole to British schoolchildren. The fact that a Norwegian had gotten there first came as something of a shock to Alistair Cooke (certainly an educated man), who hosted the televised version of The Last Place on Earth on Masterpiece Theatre. As Huntford points out, Scott's wife Kathleen and her friend, Sir James Barrie (of Peter Pan fame) had a significant hand in the editing of his diaries, so as to give the impression that Scott was more of an heroic figure. And as for man-hauling being a vindicated technique over dogsled; only when you're being re-supplied by airdrop (something Scott didn't have the luxury of). I have to laugh at the modern explorers who compare their radio-monitored, airplane resupplied, superlightweight modern technology treks as being "in the footsteps of" Nansen, or Shackelton, or Amundsen, or even Scott. Those men were harder than iron. The book smashes through the beautiful language of Scott's diaries, and sees into the dry language of Amundsen's. It is an excellent piece of non-fiction, and an adventure tale, and a great pair of biographies. I highly recommend it.
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