Scott and Amundsen: Duel in the Ice.

A concise and fairly superficial retelling of the Antarctic story from the Belgica to Scott’s death. It does emphasize, as others often ignore, Amundsen’s reliance on his Polar reading for his preparation.

p. 30-2: …he read everything that had been written about voyages of discovery, “all the relevant books I could get my hands on; and so it was I noticed a momentous failure of most of the earlier Polar expeditions, The leaders of these expeditions had not always been ship’s captains, so they had almost always had to entrust the running of their ships to experienced seamen. In every such case it has turned out to have disastrous consequences because as soon as the expedition was at sea it no longer had one leader, but two.