Enjoy fast, FREE delivery, exclusive deals and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV episodes with Prime Video
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Buy new:
$14.48$14.48
FREE delivery: Saturday, Aug 19 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.
Payment
Secure transaction
Ships from
Amazon
Sold by
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
Buy used: $12.94
Other Sellers on Amazon
FREE Shipping
98% positive over last 12 months
FREE Shipping
100% positive over last 12 months
FREE Shipping
96% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
The Coldest March: Scott`s Fatal Antarctic Expedition Hardcover – September 1, 2001
Purchase options and add-ons
?An absorbing, fascinating read . . . a book that will appeal to the explorer in everyone.?Sally Ride
?Solomon argues her case well, in exact and graceful prose.?Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World
?Persuasive. . . . [Solomon] reaches important new conclusions about Scotts expedition.?Sara Wheeler, New York Times Book Review
?Brilliant. . . . A marvelous and complex book: at once a detective story, a brilliant vindication of a maligned man, and an elegy both for Scott and his men and for the ?crystalline continent on which they died.?Robert MacFarlane, Guardian
?Solomon has crafted a smart, terrific book and an important addition to polar history.?Roberta MacInnis, Houston Chronicle
- Print length416 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherYale University Press
- Publication dateSeptember 1, 2001
- Dimensions6.5 x 1.25 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-100300089678
- ISBN-13978-0300089677
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"A great adventure story, made even more compelling by a modern scientific detective." -- Bruce Babbitt, former Secretary of the Interior
"A valuable and sympathetic contribution . . . written by the leader of an expedition that ended in triumph." -- Jonathan Weiner, author of The Beak of the Finch and Time, Love, Memory
"An inspiring chronicle of Antarctic scientific exploration at its most heroic. Good science, good history, and gripping read." -- J.W. Zillman, president of the World Meteorological Organization
"Solomon debunks the more outlandish accusations heaped on Scott A compelling case for rescuing Scott from the Land of Ridicule." -- Kirkus
"[P]ersuasive. . . This thorough account. . . will be useful to anyone interested in polar matters." -- Sara Wheeler, New York Times Book Review
. . . The Coldest March captures [Scott's] legacy in the full meridian of its glory. -- Robert Lee Hotz, Los Angeles Times
From the Publisher
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Yale University Press (September 1, 2001)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 416 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0300089678
- ISBN-13 : 978-0300089677
- Item Weight : 1.63 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #814,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #288 in Arctic & Antarctica History
- #27,460 in Travel (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Important information
To report an issue with this product, click here.
About the author

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Susan Solomon may seem to have an agenda. Throughout the book, Solomon attempts to defend many of Scott's decisions and actions. She has tremendous expertise in the subject. Solomon studied the Ozone layer in the Antarctic. She is a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado. When considering the legend of Scott, Solomon admits that she assumed the Brit explorer foolishly disregarded the power of Mother Nature until she studied the data and diaries left by Scott and his crew (xvii). While Solomon often defends Scott against highly critical historical accounts like Huntford's The Last Place on Earth, she is no apologist. She also points out Scott's errors and baffling decisions.
At the beginning of each chapter, Solomon includes part of the experiences of a modern-day Antarctic visitor. This visitor is not a specific person but a conglomeration of typical visitors. At first I was confused as, while reading about this modern experience, the story would shift gears to 1911-12. Soon, I figured out the pattern. The modern stories are at the beginning of each chapter (only about 2-3 pages each) and are in bold print. These stories are able to demonstrate clearly the issues or problems surrounding the Scott legend: i.e. comparing the huge stock of frozen vegetables at the warehouse there today and the comfortable living conditions against what Scott and his him men faced (pp. 71-2), the importance of drinking plenty of water in higher elevations versus the meager cups of tea Scott and company could drink each day with the scarce fuel they had, (p. 209), how much a visitor suffers in just a short period in extreme conditions (p. 286), etc. These stories, especially one explaining the need to risk snowblindness to better see crevasses (p. 183) helped me, as a reader who will never experience anything remotely close to the Antarctic, better understand the issues people face there.
Solomon clearly refutes points of criticism of Scott: i.e. that his men suffered from scurvy because they refused to eat seal meat or their ponies (pp. 3, 176), that the final five men who journeyed to the Pole did not have enough to eat because they only prepared food for four (p. 213), etc. She does point out Scott's weaknesses and mistakes. For example, he put too much faith in the opinions of some of his men (p. 86) and, even more importantly, he planned by the margins, putting too much stock in past experiences and not preparing for the possibility of worse case scenarios as did Amundsen. The inferior sleeping bags and faulty fuel cans were significant problems stemming from a lack of proper testing and preparation. Solomon is no sycophant and makes a fair assessment based on Scott's and his men's diaries and other primary sources.
What makes this work a fresh approach is the information on weather conditions taken from stations set up near Scott's path. They provided data for several decades demonstrating that the conditions Scott faced during the last month of their lives (March 1912) were extremely rare and perhaps unprecedented. What is puzzling is Solomon's conclusions which are contradictory. She discusses the rarity of the blizzard they faced in March 1912 and then shifts to explain that a 10-day blizzard noted in Scott's diary probably did not occur and that the men stayed in their tent for other reasons; one possibly being Scott's frost-bitten foot. Then, out-of-the-blue, Solomon mentions a suicide plan Scott wrote in his diary on March 11 involving opium tablets (p. 322). They decided not to take them but it seems odd to only mention such an entry briefly towards the end of the book. They probably lived another 18 or more days. Her confusing and inconclusive ending is the only criticism I have of this well-written and fascinating book. It is extremely well-researched and, on a historical level, offers fresh ideas and approaches. She also discusses the men on Scott's team (Edward Wilson, Lawrence Oates, Henry Bowers, Edgar Evans, Lt. Edward Evans, Apsely Cherry-Garrard, etc.) describing some of their backgrounds, characters, and personalities which added a lot to the human side of the story.
Top reviews from other countries
However, to say that this is a vindication of Captain Scott's fatal expedition is, at the very least, an enthusiastic overstatement promulgated, I suspect, by Scott devotees desperate to reincarnate the misguided glory bestowed on him for the first decade or so after his and his men's deaths.
Nevertheless, as a scientific explanation, Solomon offers the reader a completely new and refreshing breakaway from the Victorian and Edwardian commentaries that have hitherto stacked the `Antarctic Expedition' book shelves.
Refreshing, informative, probing and, not least, a damn good read.

