Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #352865 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-01
• Released on: 2005-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

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
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Customer Reviews

Have to agree about PICTURES!
I really enjoyed this book! What makes a book good for me is when I want to run out and read more about that particular subject. The author made it interesting for the lay person since he is not a scientist himself. I have to agree about the pictures though. I was so fascinated by what the author was describing but couldnt really visualize such a landscape. I found myself googling Antarctica pictures to get more of an idea.

good writing, interesting stories, but...
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.

Several trips in one book
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.