Born Adventurer: The Life of Frank Bickerton, Antarctic Pioneer.

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Bickerton was a member of Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition, but resigned from Shackleton’s Endurance to join the war effort before Shackleton left for Antarctica. Although this is a full biography of Bickerton, the story of the AAE takes up the first half of the book, followed by a separate chapter on the Endurance. John King Davis, a multi-facited friend of Mawson, served as captain of Aurora, irritating a good number of officers and men, though seldom Mawson.

Icy Graves: Exploration and Death in the Antarctic

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Haddelsey here explores the primary causes of fatal accidents and mistakes causing death in Antarctica: fire, sea ice, mechanical transport, mental illness, aviation, and hypothermia. It is not surprising that a book dealing mostly with sudden catastrophes does not pause to reflect on what reading matter the destined figures had with them. The author tells quite familiar stories extremely well, and ends with a short chapter on risks and risk-taking in Antarctica, a British shortcoming in their vaunted amateurism.

Operation Tabarin: Britain’s Secret Wartime Expedition to Antarctica 1944-46.

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A thorough account of the British Secret Operation Tabarin by FIDS attempting to preempt any American or Argentine territorial claims in the Antarctic Peninsula region.This description has only a few indications of reading experiences during a hastily prepared and accident-prone mission.

Shackleton’s Dream: Fuchs, Hillary and the Crossing of Antarctica.

 Preview 

A solid, workmanlike account of the Trans-Antarctic Expedition (TAE) which for a time pitted Fuchs and Hillary in a race to the pole. The author calls it “the greatest polar expedition ever forgotten” (p. 251). He alludes to men reading occasionally, but never with any helpful details of which books or how read. General tone at times seems “a pox on both your houses” re the stubbornness of both Fuchs and Hillary.