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51 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Classic Endures, November 19, 2005
This review is from: Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure (Paperback)
The polar explorer Richard E. Byrd's "Alone" is an absolutely gripping narrative of his winter-over at a remote weather station in the Antarctic in 1934. Byrd, the leader of a U.S. polar expedition based at "Little America" on the Ross Ice Shelf, had intended to place a three-man station in the interior of the Antarctic to gather valuable weather data. Circumstances drove him to limit the crew to just one person, and rather than subject anyone else to the accompanying dangers, Byrd elected to man the station by himself. Byrd's account of his stay, probably written with the assistance of his good friend Charles Murphy, captures the mundane details of survival in complete darkness and staggeringly cold temperatures. It also candidly relates his struggles to survive relentless solitude and an increasingly dangerous equipment failure that came near to taking his life.
Byrd writes from another era, when mechanization was just beginning to have a major impact on exploration in extreme environments and when the interior of the Antarctic was still very much a forbidding place, nearly as remote to the world of 1934 as the surface of the Moon is now. His narrative captures the vast primitive awesomeness of the polar regions, something largely unknown to those who live outside the high latitudes. His struggle to survive is in part an effort of will to define himself against this awful grandeur; it is this element of the story that endures and fascinates today.
Kieran Mulvaney's afterword provides necessary context for Byrd's narrative and should not be overlooked, although it includes what may well be an unjustified slur on the achievements of Robert Peary. This book is highly recommended to the reader who desires to know something of a world foreign to the relatively comfortable existance most Americans experience today.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Can fundamentally alter one's perception of nature and life., December 1, 1998
This book has the capacity to fundamentally alter the way one perceives nature and life. However, the most striking aspect of the book was Byrd's view of religion. While religious discussion does not consume a large portion of the text, Byrd's insights into the matter are unique and very interesting, especially to to the freethinking agnostic. Without catering to a particular denomination, his take on religion is a self-reliant, logical, hearty one that somehow manages to be spiritual and graceful at the same time. This is due, in large part, to the fact that so much of this view is based on his admiration and astonishment at the complexities of nature. A truly inspiring piece of work, it can crack chinks into the souls of even hardened skeptics and remind us all that life is a panorama of personal emotional relationships with others that make our own continued survival worthwhile.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Cold is Relative, January 20, 2006
This review is from: Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure (Paperback)
"Cold does queer things. At 50° below zero a flashlight dies out in your hand. At -55° kerosene will freeze. At -60° rubber turns brittle." These are some of Byrd's observations from his surreal solo expedition to the heart of Antarctica's night.
The expedition took place from March - August of 1934. Byrd, a former Navy officer, rugged explorer, decides to push the envelope doing something no man had ever tried before. He was to monitor the weather while living in a shack buried in snow, by himself, for the entire night-time period that covered almost 6 months.
Although the literary value regarding this book could be argued, it is nevertheless a great story based on a unique social experiment. Byrd's trail of thoughts veers from rational, to ridiculous. His mood is altered by the extreme struggles that he has to endure to serve science. However, one can pick up the vibe that he wanted to do this for himself as much as for science. He was thrilled at first, but underestimated what he was really in for.
Byrd gets crushed while he is only halfway through. The cold and physical problems put him down. He struggles between life and death for what seems to be an eternity. And it all takes place in the absolute darkness of the polar night. Byrd goes on and on about how much he learns to appreciate the simple things of modern life, while he has lost possession of them. He makes incoherent philosophical theoriest, and struggles with faith.
Finally Byrd finds the strength to go on. I wouldn't be giving up the end of the book in here by the fact that he wrote it four years after the completion of this expedition. This book would be a perfect read in the middle of the winter. The colder the better! Get a warm cup of chocolate and relive the polar experience. You will find a new appreciation for that thermostat knob while reading it.
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