Customer Reviews

Off the Map: Tales of Endurance and Exploration

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Hard to believe, but I couldn't put this book down! It consists of a number of vignettes, each a story of exploration. The majority seem to involve polar exploration - Northwest Passage and all that - with a fair number set in Africa, as well. Though I've read whole books on a few of these stories, in most cases a book might be too much, especially for those of us with too many books on the to-read list. The writing is excellent. (I must say, though, that I was disappointed when I read that Stanley, rather than searching all over the heart of Africa, found Livingstone in the first place that he looked!)

Fergus Fleming is a "narrative historian." "I can't conceive of writing it any other way," the recently deceased Shelby Foote once said. "Narrative history is the kind that comes closest to telling the truth. You can never get to the truth, but that's your goal."

As a narrative historian, Mr. Fleming writes of history almost as he would a novel. He doesn't footnote every fact, he doesn't quote every statement anyone said. He writes the history as a story, an interesting story. In the bibliography at the back he says, "it seems redundant to itemize every letter, every diary, every scrap of archive material. The following is a list of books that I have found most directly helpful."

From these books, and probably a lifetime of accumulated historical knowledge, Mr. Fleming tells the tale here of the discoverers who ventured "Off the Map." The tales range from the time of the Renaissance through the 1920's when the intenal combusion engine changed all the rules. He covers the famous like Marco Polo, Columbus, Cook, Lewis and Clark. He also covers a series of others that may have escaped your attention in the past such as Ibn Battuta, Umberto Nobile, and Carl Weyprecht.

Entertaining reading and even hearing the old stories retold is enjoyable in Mr. Fleming's writing style.

I expected this book to be the advertised "tales" of exploration, but I think that doesn't do justice to the depth of detail and research in the content. Rather than describe how far someone went and how cold it was there, he excerpts explorers' journals and gives a feel for the degree of pain and suffering of the journey, as well as what the exploration did or did not accomplish in scientific or imperialistic terms. In one memorable Antarctic exploration chapter, for example, Fleming relates how the explorer's skin peeled off in a truly horrific manner (you can't even imagine) as related in his journals. Fleming then goes on to theorize on the cause of the condition (eating his sled dog's liver) and why this did not happen to other adventurers in the Antarctic. There are dozens and dozens of individual stories in this book, and I'm amazed at how many of the tiny details are still imprinted in my brain. They'll make great campfire stories sometime.

On the other hand, "encyclopedia" doesn't sound like "fun read," and this book truly is. I'd highly recommend it to those who enjoy richly detailed yet thoroughly engaging stories of great adventure, risk, and near (or often, total) death.

As any newspaper or magazine editor will tell you, people love to read about other peoples travails. There are 45 stories in all in this book, separated into three sections: Reconnaisance, Inquiry and Endeavor. Originally people travels to find out what was going on with their neighbors, these are reconnaisance. Later they travelled for knowledge, such as how to get to such and such a place in the fastest way possible. Lastly were people who went to inaccessible places because they were there.

For me the most fun was reconnaisance and the early travellers. These people mostly went out of curiousity. They went to find out what was on the other side of the mountain or on the other side of the lake. They went mostly out of sheer human need to see what they could see, and if they actually would fall off the end of the earth, or if there really were people with heads in the middle of their stomachs.

The inquirers went for plunder and glory. They were looking for gold and people they could exploit. They did this very well and in the end usually ended up either enslaving those natives they found, exploiting them; and in many cases decimating them and their cultures with a mixture of religion and disease. They did no one any lasting good.

The last group are those looking for the north and south poles and endeavoring to climb the alps and Mr.Everest; or too fill in the blank spaces in Africa. To a man they seemed to do it for the glory; and those who did it for King and Country were even dumber than those who did it for glory. More than half of those listing in this section ending up dying because of poor planning, disease or just plain stupidity. Most of them are a comment on the vanity of man.

Flemings style is very straight forward, and as he states these are narrative tales and not stories. I leave to you to decide on the difference.

If you love reading about exploration and adventure, this is the book for you! Fergus Fleming is one of the best story tellers when it comes to relating tales of man's greatest efforts in the world of exploration. This is an easy read, covering many different stories from Marco Polo to Ernest Shackleton. Virtually all parts of the world are covered from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from the Jungles to the Deserts. Each story is unique and written in a style that will capture you and put you right along side the explorer. The accounts are short but quite inclusive of the important points. If anything, they will peak your interest to read a more detailed account of those stories the reader finds particularly interesting. Truly, a great book and one of Fleming's best!

Off the Map is a wonderfll book. It is basically a summary of world exploration from Marco Polo in 1271 to Umberto Nobile in 1928. There are separate chapters about each explorer, all arranged in chronological order with each chapter about 10-20 pages each. The chapter lengths are just right in that they are not too long, but also not lacking for detailed information. Each chapter also has a map that illustrates where the particular explorer travelled, which was extremely helpful. There are also 3 separate sections of illustrations and photos which helps give a visual picture of the explorers.
Overall, this book is packed with information and is written in such a way that each chapter is told like a story and each story takes you back in time to a different era. If you are intertested in world exploration or world history, then this book is a must read. I enjoyed it very much.

Everyone hates negative reviews, but if you give a negative review a negative rating -- and there's more than one disappointed reader here -- don't say no one warned you. Fleming is a guy who has figured out that anyone can write books; for a discussion of this "democratizing" phenomenon, see Andrew Keen's just-published "Cult of the Amateur." What Fleming has NOT figured out is that there was no money available for pure science -- let alone "the spirit of pure adventure" he so relishes -- in the 16th century, period. Expeditions HAD to be profitable. He beats the dead horse of Greed without once stopping to ask himself, "Is there something I don't know about the world of my ancestors?"

The first five stories were dull recapitulations of journeys I happen to know something about, in which he repeats myths that were disproved long ago. What lay ahead of me were stories about adventurers I did NOT know much about, and I wasn't in the mood for poorly written fiction. I was actually in the rarest of moods -- to go through all the trouble and expense of returning a book I only paid $12 for!

This book is a good first step for someone interested to read about former explorers and then, deciding wich one you want to learn more about in a specific book.

In my case, I've read about all there was to know about Antarctica and Arctic exploration and wanted to get a glimpse at some other tales I didn't knew. It was fun to learn about Mount Everest's first climb, how India was mapped or about Umberto Nobile's tragic flight.

However, I was able to pick up some mistakes about tales I had very good knowledge about. Like when Fleming wrote that Ernest Wild was the leader of the Elephant Island castaways when, in fact, it was his brother Frank and Ernest was fighting on for dear life on the Ross Sea side with heroic Ernest Joyce and the Ross Sea party.

Conclusion, Off the Map is a quick survey of harrowing tales of exploration, and it will direct you to the ones that deserves a more serious look on your part. In all honesty, I might have given the book 5 stars had I not knew many of the story inside it prior to reading it.

I almost passed on this book, which seemed a little dense at times, but after a few more chapters I became enthralled. The author has a way of making the characters come to life that it wasn't boring anymore!

This is a very good book to me. Short concise tales of many different explorers. Has led me to other books about individual explorers that I found more to my interest that i wanted to learn about more indepthly, if that is a word.