Life on the Ice: No One Goes To Antarctica Alone [Paperback]

Roff Smith (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Bicycling outside Melbourne, Australia, Smith decided to resurrect a childhood dream of traveling to Antarctica. After receiving a writer's grant permitting a seven-week visit, Smith quit his newspaper job, landed a freelance gig with Time, and headed south. Way south to Mawson, one of four year-round bases. What follows is a magical description of Mawson's last days (the base was to be shut down, with a new, huge complex opening nearby). Smith witnesses the final run of a geriatric sled dog team, the very last time dogs would be used in Antarctica, and the base handover ceremony. The trip had faded to a pleasant memory when the author was asked by National Geographic if he would like to spend the summer traveling all around Antarctica--visiting bases and field camps, the South Pole, even spending five weeks on a yacht exploring the Antarctic Peninsula. Smith is the most exceptional of travel writers: his portraits of people are deeply sympathetic, while his language is at once lyrical and knowledgeable. Not to be missed. Rebecca Maksel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: National Geographic (February 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792293452
• ISBN-13: 978-0792293453
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.6 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,099,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Several trips in one book, August 3, 2006

By 

Margaret A. Cleary (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life on the Ice: No One Goes To Antarctica Alone (Paperback)

Roff Smith writes in this book about more than one trip to Antarctica, and in each trip he moves around from base to base to explore the place. For this reason, the book feels a bit disjointed, but it is a great portrait of the place and the people who live and work there today and the support systems that help them from the outside. Smith is often funny, as well as awestruck. That seems to be the effect the place has on people.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Really enjoyable, September 29, 2005

By 

Knerq - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life on the Ice: No One Goes To Antarctica Alone (Paperback)

Though I don't usually read non-fiction, I found this book to be really enjoyable. I did not know much about Antartica before reading Life on the Ice but before I knew it, I had learned a lot. I had to smile at his description of the penguins! This book is great for those hot summer days, it transports you to another world. For me, it took a few chapters to get into it but when I finished it, I shared it with my husband. He was able to get into it right away and loved it.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars good writing, interesting stories, but..., May 20, 2007

By 

quiettime (Katy, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life on the Ice: No One Goes To Antarctica Alone (Paperback)

How can you do a National Geographic book that covers multiple trips to Antarctica with no photographs and no maps? I also found Smith's condescending comments about the United States to be annoying. Yes, I can imagine the beaurocracy seemed pointless and tedious, but still. Not to acknowledge in the list of acknowledgments anything of value provided to him by the U.S. Antarticic Program seems petty. To read between the lines, I felt that Smith was saying that an Antarctica with no U.S. presence would be superior to any value that the U.S. has provided there.