Deep Freeze: the United States, the International Geophysical Year, and the Origins of Antarctica’s Age of Science.

Belanger, Dian. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Pass, 2006.
  • 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

A comprehensive historical account of the development of Operation Deep Freeze and the IGY, dense but well-written. The first eight chapters give the historical development of the American stations: McMurdo, Little America V, the South Pole, and the three more remote gap stations. Chapters 9 to 11 the major scientific areas of research: meteorology, the physics of the atmosphere, and geology/glaciology, making the scientific details clear to the lay non-scientist. The final chapter is about the experience of life on the ice, an evocative account for anyone who was there.

Antarctic Scout

Chappell, Richard Lee. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1959.
  • 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Chappell was part of a program to send Boy Scouts on Antarctic expeditions, in his case to Operation Deep Freeze II when he was a winterover at Little America. Paul Siple was an earlier participant who became an important American explorer and encouraged this young man who later went to Princeton. The writing is wooden and generally sanctimonious, betraying the author’s youth. Reading is minimal, mostly confined to the Bible (p. 81), though he does find a copy of Murphy’s Oceanic Birds of South America to help his pursuit of ornithology, and he did participate in Little America’s “University of the Antarctic.” At those sessions he studied Morse code and did manage to send off a sample message. He ends with a rather fundamentalist homily based on Matt 28:20: “lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Chappell does not appear to have published anything else.

The Frigid Mistress: Life and Exploration in Antarctica.

Doumani, George A. Baltimore, MD: Noble House, 1999.
  • 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

A personal account of five trips to the Antarctic, mainly to Byrd Station. Probably the worst book of Antarctic exploration I’ve encountered. To quote one review of this account of five visits to Antarctica: “He is no writer.” There is one paragraph about the library room at Byrd Station: if the publisher had remembered to provide pagination I would provide a citation—it’s near the beginning of the book.

Operation Deepfreeze.

Dufek, George J. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1957.
  • 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Rear Admiral Dufek was Commander U.S. Naval Support Force Antarctica, but apart from a fairly extensive bibliography his book shows no sign of his own reading. However, there are a few references:

90° South: The Story of the American South Pole Conquest.

Siple, Paul. New York: Putnam’s, 1959.
  • 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Essentially the story of the establishment of the first base at the South Pole, now called the Amundsen-Scott Station, by the scientific leader of the expedition. As so often in the science/military relationship, Siple seems not to have gotten on too well with the military leader of Operation Deep Freeze, George Dufek, but is only mildly sarcastic in his criticism. The book contains a good deal more science than many of these accounts, and little on the recreational activities of the winter night. He attributes this to the lack of time for pastimes while getting and keeping the base operational. There are a few passages dealing with reading:

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….