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Rating: 
Summary: Unexepectly good!
Review: After reading End of the Earth, by Peter Matthiessen I felt a lot more informed about the continent that you exist, but never really is talked about. Other then that it's a continent made up of water that's been frozen for thousands of years, you really don't know much about. He took a place on earth where most wouldn't dare to venture to once, let alone twice and wrote about it. He gave light to a place where it might have seemed dismal and dreary and gave it life. He makes the reader want to keep learning more about this mysterious place even after the book is all finished and done with. He is very detail in his description and makes sure you understand what's going on, and the feeling he felt while there. From beginning to end, you keep asking yourself why would Matthiessen choose to go on not one, but two different and separate voyages to Antarctica, one of the coldest and dismal places in the world. I would have never thought a book about Antarctica could be so detailed and so interesting. If you like learning about new things, and love nature, this is a good book for you!
Rating: 
Summary: What a tour guide!
Review: After reading Shackleton's "South" I thought I knew a lot about Antarctica, but this book revealed how much I didn't know - the forces at work behind the obstacles Shackleton and other adventurers faced in the quest for the pole, and a greater understanding of the wildlife they encountered. I learned that we cannot understand how the Earth works without understanding how the Antarctic region works - and Matthiessen explains its global reach. The touring format is a wonderful way to learn about the history and science of this region and Matthiessen is a wonderful guide (his poetic prose is Melville-esque). This is my first book by Matthiessen, and I will be sure to read many more.
Rating: 
Summary: Appalling!
Review: I recently returned from South Georgia/Antarctica and immediatly ordered Peter Matthiessen's book. In his very first sentence is an error so great (Punta Arenas,located in Argentina) that I suddenly found myself searching for further errors. YES--I found them and I'm only on page 31!! Still--I will finish the book and probably find some enjoyment from it, if only that I want deeper conversation about a wilderness I came to love.
Rating:
Summary: Appalling!
Review: I recently returned from South Georgia/Antarctica and immediatly ordered Peter Matthiessen's book. In his very first sentence is an error so great (Punta Arenas,located in Argentina) that I suddenly found myself searching for further errors. YES--I found them and I'm only on page 31!! Still--I will finish the book and probably find some enjoyment from it, if only that I want deeper conversation about a wilderness I came to love.
Rating:
Summary: Matthiessen does it again!
Review: I've always enjoyed Peter's books, especially the Snow Leopard. I've travelled to many spots all over the world (unfortunately, not to Antarctica yet - although my husband is a pilot on "the Ice"). His prose is a little drier and more austere, but then again, from what I hear from my husband and various travelers to Antarctica (including Shackleton and Scott), that is what Antarctica is like. I do enjoy Peter's environmentalist views, and I don't think there is any irony in the fact he wishes people wouldn't travel to the Ice - at least, not in large, damaging numbers. I think we need people like him to describe these things for us and WHY it is so important to protect these fragile environments. I have heard about many stories of many people - wealthy and otherwise - coming to the South Pole Station and other spots around the continent, stealing the geographic South Pole markers, leaving their trash behind, disrespecting the National Science Foundation rules and the Antarctic Treaty stipulations. There are all kinds of people in the world, and no one can stop them from making jerks of themselves - but we can read this book, be educated, and have a little healthier respect for such places, and in turn educate other people.
This is an interesting travel book, and a good addition to anyone's collection who is interested in travel to far-flung places and especially to anyone who is interested in the south polar regions.
As for Anne Olsen's comments - while I normally do not comment on other people's reviews (and I've done so twice! Yikes!) , I have to say, she is the one completely, totally, absolutely and embarrassingly in the wrong. Mattthiessen describes the first sentence that he "fetched up in Punta Arenas, Chile...." and she claims he made a gross error and states Punta Arenas is in Argentina. I'm sure he's made some mistakes in his book - I have over 1,000 books in my library and it's safe to say every one of them probably has a mistake or two. We are not perfect, we human beings. HOWEVER......... Peter Matthiessen didn't say anything wrong. Punta Arenas is, in fact, in Chile - not Argentina. There are actually a few Punta Arenas (Guatemala, Venezuela, Peru), but it is NOT in Argentina. Can't argue with the map!
Rating: 
Summary: This book could drive you to the end of the Earth...
Review: Leave it to Peter Matthiessen to take the last great place on earth and write about it with the same degree of enthusiasm he would have if he were reporting on a geriatric field trip to Wal-Mart. From beginning to end, you keep asking yourself what could possibly have compelled Matthiessen to embark on not one but two seperate voyages to Antarctica, because he seems to have absolutely no passion for the journey or the place itself. In tedious, frequently ossified and yet oddly pretentious prose, he drones ad nauseum with details about what he is seeing, but with a removal that sounds as if he is watching television. You sometimes find yourself wondering if he's really even there at all, for when he sees things that should be astonishing to any mortal, he yawns and seems to find it all rather boring. Strangely, Matthiessen's eye for endless detail doesn't extend to proofreading; there are errors and innacuracies of both fact and syntax everywhere. He thinks Punta Arenas is in Argentina, which will come as something of a surprise to Chile. He isn't too clear on the submerged proportions of an iceberg,either... he gets it almost right once, then completely wrong another time (four-fifth's can be underwater). Playing fast and loose with the facts, such innacuracies don't help his case when he launches into a tirade against government environmental policy. You want to think he knows what he's talking about, but if he can't tell the difference between Argentina and Chile, what else is he getting wrong? Besides, if he was as truly as rabid an environmentalist as he would like us to think he is, he wouldn't have gone. Ultimately, Matthiessen has become the thing he seems to have no patience for: a tourist. Antarctica seems to be just another check on his life list, another entry on his C.V., and I had to laugh when I read on the end flap how he has "participated in expeditions to wild parts of every continent." The book reads and feels as if the only reason he went to Antarctica was so that his publicist could say that with a straight face. Matthiessen should have stayed home. He probably would have had a better time.
Rating:
Summary: Worth it
Review: The man wears his pretensions on his sleeve. OK, I could deal with that. His recurrent environmental proclamations are annoying, primarily because he glories in an expedition that invades the space he wants to keep pristine. Major contradiction. But his prose is often stunning, his descriptions riveting, and the sense of place striking. I came away from the book with an appreciation of Antarctica and its wildlife. Not a bad achievement for an author.
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