Antarctica, 1958,

Stone, Robert. New Yorker (June 12, 2006), p. 52-54 [Talk of the Town].
  • 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

In 1958, I was a duty helmsman on the bridge of the U.S.S. Arneb, an ungainly naval transport ship with the lines of a tramp steamer…. When I went below to crash, taking to my rack, which was at the top of a four-high tier. I lay down to read with my pocket flashlight. I had “Ulysses” checked out from the Norfolk, Virginia, public library, and plenty of time to be patient with it. When we started sliding to port, I’d stay with Leopold Bloom for as long as I could tough it out, waiting for the big lumbering ship to arrest its roll and come back to starboard…. Then I’d set my book aside and ponder my fortune….

Innocents on the Ice: A Memoir of Antarctic Exploration, 1957.

Behrendt, John H. Boulder, Colorado: University of Colorado Press, 1998.
  • 1957-58 Operation Deep Freeze I. Ellesworth Station. (Finn Ronne).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

An account of the International Geophysical Year expedition to the Weddell Sea with Captain Finn Ronne, 1956-58, with emphasis on the stresses and conflicts between the military captain and the civilian scientists. Behrendt is unusual in noting, mostly from his daily journal, a substantial amount of reading during the winter at Ellsworth Station. These readings included Ronne’s own Antarctic Conquest (p. 24); War and Peace (p. 58); The Rebel (Camus) and Stefansson’s Arctic Manual (p. 114); Gods Graves and Scholars (Ceram: p. 122); Thurber (p. 136); Cold (Gould: p. 140); thesaurus (p. 153); The White Desert (Giaever: p. 158 with a long quote); Mrs Warren’s Profession (Shaw) and Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck: p. 170); The Rain Cave: p. 189); Of Whales and Men (R.B. Robertson: p. 201); Life on the Mississippi (Twain: p. 214); The Life of Greece (Durant: p. 223); Scott’s Last Expedition (p. 320); Time magazine (p. 323); Merck Manual (p. 346); Human Destiny (LeComte de Nouilly: p. 371); The Wall (Hersey: p. 374).

Antarctic Command

Ronne, Finne. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961.
  • 1957-58 Operation Deep Freeze I. Ellesworth Station. (Finn Ronne).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Ronne’s self-justifying and self-pitying account of his disastrous command of the IGY expedition at Ellsworth Station in the Weddell Sea in 1956-58, mainly acknowledging the extreme tensions between military and civilian scientists.

In Search of a Penguin’s Egg.

Norman, Nelson. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2009.
  • 1958-59 British FIDS (BAS) Expedition at Halley Bay.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Norman Nelson was in the British National Service when he was transferred to a FIDS expedition to the Falklands and the Antarctic Peninsula in 1958. Raymond Priestley introduced him to the prospect of following up on Edward Wilson’s penguin studies of 1911. His experience was similar.

“The Mirny Diary” 12 February 1958–7 February 1959

Rubin, Morton J. https://www.antarctican.org/s/MJRubin-Mirny_Diary-jspy.pdf.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

This detailed diary was contributed by Morton Rubin's brother Harry. He gives credit to Mr. and Mrs. Martin Sponholz for painstakingly deciphering and transcribing Morton's original hand-written manuscript. It is a fascinating glimpse of winterover life at an IGY Russian station.

Blizzard and Fire: A Year at Mawson, Antarctica.

Béchervaise, John. London: Angus and Robertson, 1964.
  • 1959-60 Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

This book concerns the ANARE trip to Mawson in 1959. A somehwat odd book in that it is an epistolary account of a year at an Australian base by letters to a variety of friends and relatives, interspersed with a series of newsletters ostensibly for a public audience. He does tell some exciting stories as the base commander, but his references to reading are more utiitarian than inspirational, for example the use of The Australian Pilot to find repair facilities in various places (p. 24). A discussion of Plato and death is more speculative and a rarity for this book (p. 135). However, there are some quietly meditative passages that make the book valuable and are reproduced here even though unrelated to Antarctic reading.

Antarctic Odyssey.

Law, Phillip. Melbourne: Heinemann, 1983.
  • 1952-53 Australian Heard Island Expedition; 1959-60 Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

A history of the early years of ANARE, the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition, by its original Director, and starting with its two island stations at Macquarrie Island and Heard Island and later the Mawson station at Horseshoe Harbour. It’s not a particularly inspired account, and it exhibits a certain solemn narcissism. But it does have some dramatic moments (e.g. the Hurricane) and some useful chapters on issues of administration, the psychological aspects of personnel selection, and questions regarding design of materials to be used at ANARE bases, from prefabricated huts to clothing.

Across West Antarctica

Pirrit, John. Glasgow: John Smith & Son, 1967.
  • 1959-60 US Overland Traverse Ellsworth Station to Byrd Station.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

An account of the post-IGY year traversing by Sno-Cat from Ellsworth Station to Byrd Station in 1959-60 by a Scottish glaciologist.

A Story of British Whaling in Antarctica

McLaughlin, W R D. London: White Lion Publications, 1962.
  • 1962 Pelagic Whaling Voyage to South Georgia.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

By a ship’s doctor, participant on a pelagic whaling expedition to South Georgia, etc. in 1962.

Ninth Circle: a Memoir of Life and Death in Antarctica, 1960-1962.

Behrendt, John C. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.
  • 1958-62 Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Much more prosaic than his earlier book on Ellsworth Station, and much less evidence of reading than in that book. Most of what follows is from his diaries of the time and not his connective commentary:

Vodka on Ice: a Year with the Russians in Antarctica.

Swithinbank, Charles. Sussex, UK: Book Guild Ltd, 2002.
  • 1963-64 Russian Antarctic Wintering Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Recounts his experience as the only UK citizen on a Russian Soviet wintering expedition in 1963-64. The base was Novolazarevska (on the Antarctic coast of the Indian Ocean) and the personnel 12 Russians, 1 Czech, and Charles.

Antarctica: The Worst Place in the World.

Baum, Allyn. New York: Macmillan, 1966.
  • 1964-65 Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Baum was a NYTimes reporter and photographer assigned to Operation Deep Freeze for later expeditions. The book is really quite a crude one with a large number of historical inaccuracies, but it has some appeal to romantisizers of the worst place in the world.

Voyage to Desolation Island.

Kauffmann, Jean-Paul. London, Harvill Press, 2000.
  • 1970 French Expedition to Kerguélen Islands.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

This Frenchman seems a bit obsessed with boredom, as shown on his travel book to the Kerguélen Islands. The week-long voyage provides “the indispensable prelude to getting to know any unknown country: waiting and boredom.” “Isn’t having nothing to do the supreme test, more even than suffering? Whoever can fill the emptiness of his being, where there is nothing more to occupy it, will survive. He will overcome the cruelest torture: time without limit and without end. Pain keeps one occupied; the man who suffers sees himself in his torment.