The Last Place on Earth (Modern Library Exploration) [Paperback]

Roland Huntford (Author), Paul Theroux (Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Modern Library Exploration | Publication Date: September 7, 1999

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Pole was the most coveted prize in the fiercely nationalistic modern age of exploration. In the brilliant dual biography, the award-winning writer Roland Huntford re-examines every detail of the great race to the South Pole between Britain's Robert Scott and Norway's Roald Amundsen. Scott, who dies along with four of his men only eleven miles from his next cache of supplies, became Britain's beloved failure, while Amundsen, who not only beat Scott to the Pole but returned alive, was largely forgotten. This account of their race is a gripping, highly readable history that captures the driving ambitions of the era and the complex, often deeply flawed men who were charged with carrying them out. THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH is the first of Huntford's masterly trilogy of polar biographies. It is also the only work on the subject in the English language based on the original Norwegian sources, to which Huntford returned to revise and update this edition.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On December 14, 1911, the classical age of polar exploration ended when Norway's Roald Amundsen conquered the South Pole. His competitor for the prize, Britain's Robert Scott, arrived one month later--but died on the return with four of his men only 11 miles from their next cache of supplies. But it was Scott, ironically, who became the legend, Britain's heroic failure, "a monument to sheer ambition and bull-headed persistence. His achievement was to perpetuate the romantic myth of the explorer as martyr, and ... to glorify suffering and self-sacrifice as ends in themselves." The world promptly forgot about Amundsen.

Biographer Ronald Huntford's attempt to restore Amundsen to glory, first published in 1979 under the title Scott and Amundsen, has been thawed as part of the Modern Library Exploration series, captained by Jon Krakauer (of Into Thin Air fame). The Last Place on Earth is a complex and fascinating account of the race for this last great terrestrial goal, and it's pointedly geared toward demythologizing Scott. Though this was the age of the amateur explorer, Amundsen was a professional: he left little to chance, apprenticed with Eskimos, and obsessed over every detail. While Scott clung fast to the British rule of "No skis, no dogs," Amundsen understood that both were vital to survival, and they clearly won him the Pole.

Amundsen in Huntford's view is the "last great Viking" and Scott his bungling opposite: "stupid ... recklessly incompetent," and irresponsible in the extreme--failings that cost him and his teammates their lives. Yet for all of Scott's real or exaggerated faults, he understood far better than Amundsen the power of a well-crafted sentence. Scott's diaries were recovered and widely published, and if the world insisted on lionizing Scott, it was partly because he told a better story. Huntford's bias aside, it's clear that both Scott and Amundsen were valiant and deeply flawed. "Scott ... had set out to be an heroic example. Amundsen merely wanted to be first at the pole. Both had their prayers answered." --Svenja Soldovieri

Review

"A remarkably vivid picture of the agonies and feuds, as well as joys,
of polar exploration . . . a fascinating book."--The New York Times

"An extraordinarily rich reading experience."--Los Angeles Times

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Pole was the most coveted prize in the fiercely nationalistic modern age of exploration. In this brilliant dual biography, the award-winning writer Roland Huntford reexamines every detail of the great race to the South Pole between Britain's Robert Scott and Norway's Roald Amundsen. Scott, who died along with four of his men only eleven miles from his next cache of supplies, became Britain's beloved failure, while Amundsen, who not only beat Scott to the Pole but returned alive, was largely forgotten. This account of their race is a gripping, highly readable history that captures the driving ambitions of the era and the complex, often deeply flawed men who were charged with carrying them out.

The Last Place on Earth is the first of Huntford's masterly trilogy of polar biographies. It is also the only work on the subject in the English language based on the original Norwegian sources, to which Huntford returned to revise and update this edition.

Roland Huntford is the former Scandinavian correspondent for the London Observer. He is the bestselling author of two critically acclaimed biographies of Ernest Shackleton and Fridtjof Nansen as well as the novel Sea of Darkness. He lives in Cambridge, England.

Jon Krakauer is the author of Into Thin Air, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Into the Wild. His work has appeared in many magazines, including Outside, Smithsonian, and National Geographic. He chose the books in the Modern Library Exploration series for their literary merit and historical significance--and because he found them such a pleasure to read.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library (September 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375754741
• ISBN-13: 978-0375754746
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,768 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > History > Europe > Norway
  • #7 in Books > History > Australia & Oceania > Polar Regions
  • #44 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Specific Groups > Adventurers & Explorers

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What really happened, April 3, 2000

By 

John L. Velonis (Dobbs Ferry, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Last Place on Earth (Modern Library Exploration) (Paperback)

I recently read "Scott's Last Expedition", the edited version of his diaries from his South Pole expedition. This left me interested but unfulfilled: I wanted to learn more about Amundsen and the context for both expeditions, and to get more analysis of the bald facts as related in Scott's diaries. So I turned to Huntford's "The Last Place on Earth".

I was not disappointed. Huntford narrates the entire lives of both Amundsen and Scott, with edifying discursions on Nansen, Shackleton, and other Polar explorers. Huntford knows Norwegian and thus was able to consult primary sources for Amundsen's expedition directly; he provides many excerpts from the letters and diaries of both British and Norwegian expedition members. He also reveals some of the omissions in the edited version of Scott's diaries.

As a minor quibble, Huntford only rarely gives full dates, so that I found myself frequently having to page back a considerable way to remind myself which year or even which month it was. An appendixed chronology would have been immeasurably helpful.

As other reviewers have noted, the author is highly critical of Scott -- occasionally unfairly so, as when he notes that Scott's first depot journey brought "a ton of supplies not quite to 80 degrees South" where Amundsen's party had "moved three tons another two degrees of latitude closer to the Pole", omitting to mention that Amundsen started about a degree farther south than Scott. But from the evidence Huntford adduces, even without his interpretations, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Scott was criminally unprepared, negligent, and generally incompetent. It is not as though he had no information about what he would be facing -- his previous expedition encountered nearly all the same problems, but he seems not to have learned anything from it. Huntford shows how Scott's diaries and their careful editing combine to portray Scott in a much more favorable light than he deserves -- a case of the loser writing the history books.

Huntford also reveals what might charitably be called "traditional" attitudes toward women. For example, speaking of Kathleen Bruce, Scott's future wife, Huntford says, "She was a predatory female; more predatory than usual, that is." Fortunately, since nearly all the principal figures in the book are male, this only surfaces occasionally, as when Huntford describes Amundsen as having "an almost feminine sensitivity for the undertones and cross-currents on which a leader has to play".

Despite its flaws, "The Last Place on Earth" should be among the first books you read on Polar exploration, or true-life adventure in general. Once the race for the Pole was on, I found it as hard to put down as any fictional thriller.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Riveting but blatantly biased, March 9, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Place on Earth (Modern Library Exploration) (Paperback)

"The Last Place on Earth" (formerly published as "Scott and Amundsen") is Roland Huntford's version of what he calls "the last great voyage of terrestrial discovery" -- the race to be the first person to reach the South Pole in the early 20th century. Huntford weaves a gripping tale of how Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott planned their separate expeditions, laid in supplies, navigated and finally reached the holy grail of 90° South. Amundsen beat Scott to the Pole by a month and returned home to a hero's welcome. Scott and his team, on the other hand, died on the way back from the Pole, and their bodies were discovered months later. It's quite a tale, and Huntford tells it in such a way as to keep the reader engrossed and riveted. Unfortunately, he cannot keep his admiration for Amundsen or his contempt for Scott concealed or even low-key.

In every page, Amundsen is presented as a polar genius, who soaked up knowledge and used it to guarantee (as much as possible) a safe journey to the Pole and back. He develops his own rations and spends endless time fine-tuning his equipment. He uses a pattern of Eskimo clothing to keep warm and dry. He depends on seal meat to ward off scurvy, and brings along far more food and fuel than he actually needs. Generally, he knows exactly what he's doing.

In stark contrast, Scott is depicted as a world-class buffoon, who acheived his station in life through connections rather than talent. Every action he takes is shot through with disaster, from the way he designed his sledges to the rations he took. And let's not even talk about his attempt at going to the Pole with ponies instead of sledge dogs. According to Huntford, he can't do anything right, and he pays for it with his life and the lives of the four men he took to the Pole with him. (His depiction of Scott resulted in Scott's son angrily and publicly disowning the book, once he saw what the author had done to his father's reputation.)

"The Last Place on Earth" is a story of adventure and foolhardiness, life and death in the cold, snowy wastes of Antarctica. The reader, however, is urged to keep the author's bias in mind.

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Race for the South Pole, August 8, 2004

By 

Wayne A. Smith (Newark, DE) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Place on Earth (Modern Library Exploration) (Paperback)

This book works at several levels. First, it is a thrilling adventure story. Second, it is a wonderful management study in planning, goal setting and organization. Third, it is a classic debunker, undermining the aura (at least in the English speaking world) surrounding Robert Scott and his tragic assault on the South Pole.

Scott and Roald Amundsen engaged in a great struggle to reach "The last place on earth," the South Pole. Each had been to polar regions before, each had become national and even international celebrities due to their trekking. Each was aware of the other party's presence on the Antarctic Continent during the same months of 1911-1912 as they raced to be the first men to stand at the bottom of the world.

Scott and Amundsen were two different breeds. Scott was a helpless romantic. Even after bitter experience and near tragedy in previous expeditions, he refused to learn from Eskimos, Norwegians or others who were battling around the turn of the century to achieve various cold weather firsts (first to the north pole, first to traverse the Northwest Passage -- which went to Amundsen -- first to cross Greenland, etc.) Thus, Scott relied on British pluck and manliness instead of skis, dogs, deer and seal suits and a properly suited diet.

Amundsen was a consummate student on the other hand. He possessed not only the gift of great vision and the ego necessary to pursue it, but also the humility to know that his trip did not have to feature every facet made anew, but should be the culmination of what others had learned when surviving and moving over the planet's most forbidding environment. Thus, Amundsen took dogs to Antarctica, wore clothing he observed the Eskimos using during his journey through the Northwest Passage, relied on skis for human transportation and dieted in a way observed to prevent scurvy.

Amundsen also worked at his project. Starting years before his trek, he organized the people, finances, equipment (much specialty made and field tested in Norway's northern regions) and talked, talked, talked to those whose experiences had something to teach them. Contrast this disciplined approach to organization and logistics with Scott's haphazard throwing together of men, equipment and élan and the outcome of the race is preordained to the reader before it has begun.

(the contrast between the two approaches is such a stark lesson on planning and organization that I suspect this book will show up in business school reading lists if it has not already).

Amundsen's journey to the South Pole was uneventful compared to Scott. Conditions were harsh, temperatures low, blizzards raged, but the Norwegian's party averaged a workman like 15 or so miles a day with dogs, skis and proper provisions. Scott, on the other hand, was not sure of his starting date, did not map out nor account for food consumed during the trip and relied on man-hauling his sleds the 1400 miles round trip to the Poles and his main camp. With the same weather and conditions, Scott and his polar attack team wound up dead after what their diaries reveal was a miserable existence on the Polar Ice Cap (they did reach the Pole, expiring on the way home).

The only area in which Scott excelled over Amundsen was in romantic writing. Scott's published works on his earlier journey to Antarctica are apparently a moving and heroic read. Amundsen was about as workmanlike a writer as he was a captain. For this and other reasons lain out by the author (in his mind much having to do with a decaying empire's need for heroes performing heroic deeds -- even heroic dying) Scott is remembered much the way Pickett's Charge is -- a glorious and manly statement of such heroics that it has made the underlying (and preventable) disaster a footnote to the story.

This is a riveting book that I found hard to put down. Although the author probably takes a few too many turns at whacking Scott when his shortcomings are evident (we get the point), he has succeeded in writing a first rate thrilling adventure, historic debunking and interesting management study.