Customer Reviews

Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure (Kodansha Globe Book)

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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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

I learned about Alone when I read The Promise, the sequel to Chaim Potok's The Chosen. I approached Alone with that psychological twist in mind. Rather than reading it as an adventure story, I read Alone as a companion to the DSM-IV. Byrd had help making this book a good read, true; but his story is absolutely riveting. I have read the criticisms of Byrd's ineptitude, his failure of boy scout basics. I can imagine how anyone's mind would go to pieces just knowing the impossibility of rescue, the remoteness of the situation. I would not criticize this man for making the weird mistakes he made. The book is a fantastic journey not to the ends of the earth, but the depths of the human psyche.

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!

I felt from the beginning that I was there experiencing Admiral Byrd's journey into the outer reaches of our external (and internal) frontiers. I found myself reading some sentences over and over again as they were so poetically striking. How he and his associates expressed dignity and compassion in the face of extreme diversity is a lesson we should integrate into our daily lives. I recommend this book for ages 17 and beyond as a mandatory tool in character development. Written over 60 years ago, the themes are still timeless.

When I was thirteen, I read ALONE at the suggestion of my grandmother, Florence Wright Ferguson. Byrd's adventures in Antarctica set my imagination soaring way beyond the confines of my 7th grade classrooms.
This is the story of Byrd's near-death adventure during the winter of 1934 when he lived in a 9 x 12 shack buried in the Ross Ice Shelf located 123 miles south of his "capital city" of Little America.
ALONE describes Byrd's scientific curiosity about climate hoping to discover a relationship between Antarctic weather and that of the northern hemisphere.
This book led to my reading all of Byrd's other books and those of Captain Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton, and Mawson. ALONE led to my writing Byrd, visiting with him and then sailing on his flagship, USS Glacier (AGB-4) during Operation DeepFreeze.
ALONE is a marvelous adventure story full of escapes from -70 winter temperatures and the daring rescue by three men from Little America, one of whom, Amory H. "Bud" Waite, I met while exploring on Glacier.
This book changed my life as I grew up to see Antarctica as a model of inquiry, imagination-driven explorations and discoveries about who we are as well as about geography and geology.

John Barell, Author of Quest for Antarctica--A Journey of Wonder and Discovery (2007), www.morecuriousminds.com