The Last Place on Earth

Rating:
Summary: Riveting but blatantly biased
Review: The 2000 PBS series that featured Scott, "Beyond the Grave", pointed out that Scott was hampered by unusually cold weather, and the plodding nature of his team (which did not use dogs). The unusually cold weather created an anomaly where the ice would not melt under the sled runners, which created friction that slowed down the men fatally. But for this, Scott might have survived. Also interesting in the PBS series is speculation that the last two members of Scott's team, including his physician, stayed with Scott out of loyalty or Hippocratic Oath rather than necessity (there was no blizzard that lasted 10 days). Thus they died heroically but unnecessarily. Finally Scotts' weatherman was within 5% accurate for the average steady-state temperature conditions--and was a pioneer for Antartic weather prediction. He could not of course predict that a fatal temperature inversion would result in abnormally cold weather for a spell. I'm afraid that the book, since it was published before these facts came out, may be a bit too biased against Scott, who, nevertheless was obviously not as good as his Norwegian counterpart, since Scott apparently did not include a large enough factor of safety. Then again, that's what exploration is all about--getting close to the envelope of danger. Nothing succeeds like success.