Are you planning a trip to Antarctica? As someone who has been there several times, I have some advice: read it before you go.
The world’s most remote and hard-to-reach continent will be like nothing you’ve ever seen, and context is needed to fully understand it.
Home to incredibly large ice shelves, enormous glaciers, towering mountains and some of the most unusual wildlife in the world, it is a winter wonderland that defies the senses. It is also the setting for some of the most epic adventure stories of all time. In addition, it is a center for important scientific research, including serious study of the Earth’s climate change.
To get the most out of a trip to the White Continent, it’s worth learning more about all of the above in advance. Call it your pre-Antarctica homework.
To that end, here are eight books about Antarctica that will help you put what you’ll see into context.
Related: TPG’s Gene Sloan Takes an Express Flight to the Penguins
‘Resistance: Shackleton’s Incredible Journey’
Author: Alfredo Lansing
Written in 1959, “Endurance” remains the definitive book about one of the greatest Antarctic adventures: Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the continent in 1914. An epic story of survival (and my all-time favorite book about Antarctica), it chronicles the destruction of Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, after it was frozen in the ice and the subsequent months-long voyage, against all odds, that Shackleton and his 27-man crew made on foot and by boat. small rowboats to get home.
‘South!’
Author: Ernest Shackleton
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If you read only one book about the Shackleton expedition, Lansing’s “Endurance,” mentioned above, is the one to choose. Trained as a journalist, Lansing knows how to tell a dramatic story and is hard to put aside. But the protagonist of Lansing’s book wrote his own version of the story long before Lansing, and it has the advantage of being a first-hand account. If you want to hear the Shackleton saga straight from the mouth of the man who lived it, this is the Antarctic adventure book for you.
‘Race to the Pole’
Author: Ranulph Fiennes
“Race to the Pole” is the gripping story of the 1911 race to the South Pole by Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen, told by one of the world’s best-known polar adventurers (Fiennes was the first person to cross the North and South Pole ice caps by superficial means). Like Lansing’s “Endurance,” it is a story of epic adventure and survival in Antarctica, told by someone who knows how tough and difficult it can be to cross the continent’s endless miles of mountains and glaciers. It is considered one of the definitive accounts of the Scott and Amundsen expeditions, which claimed Scott’s life.
‘The last place on Earth’
Author: Rolando Huntford
As an alternative to “Race to the Pole” (or in addition, if you have time), you can read about Scott and Amundsen’s rivalry in “The Last Place on Earth,” a dual biography of the two men that explores their efforts to reach the South Pole. The book, dating from 1979, contrasts the fame Scott achieved even in failure (he and four of his men died during the expedition) with the relative obscurity that greeted Amundsen despite being the first to stand at the world’s southernmost point and return alive to tell the story.
‘Antarctica: an intimate portrait of a mysterious continent’
Author: Gabrielle Walker
Published in 2013, “Antarctica” offers a look at the continent in recent times, with special attention to the scientists and support staff at some of the research stations operated by the United States, France and other countries. Walker, a science writer and climate change expert, traveled extensively across the continent to chronicle the research on penguins, geology, glaciology and other scientific topics currently being conducted there, while mixing in the history of previous explorations.
‘Antarctica: a wildlife guide’
Author: Tony Soper
This 160-page manual on Antarctic wildlife is the only book I always take with me on a trip to the continent, as it contains everything you could ever want to know about all the amazing living things I’m seeing, including penguins, whales, seals and smaller birds of all kinds. Soper has been traveling to Antarctica as a guide since the early 1990s and really knows his stuff.
‘The end of the Earth: trips to Antarctica’
Author: Peter Matthiessen
The late American novelist, naturalist, and writer Peter Matthiessen offers a portrait of Antarctica as seen during two trips to the continent: one, a traditional trip to the Antarctic Peninsula, the type most travelers to the continent take; the other, a trip on a polar icebreaker that explored more remote areas. I read this book before my first trip to Antarctica in 2004 (it had just been published in 2003) and found it to be an excellent introduction for a first-time visitor. It gave me a good idea of the magical polar landscapes and unusual wildlife I was about to see, along with a passing story of the great era of Antarctic exploration and Matthiessen’s sometimes scathing reflections on humanity’s environmental failures.
‘Terra Incognita: Journeys through Antarctica’
Author: Sarah Wheeler
Like Matthiessen, travel writer and journalist Sara Wheeler offers a portrait of Antarctica as it is today, but based on a longer seven-month stay on the continent. Wheeler lived with the scientists and workers who inhabit Antarctica’s many research stations and recounted his encounters with them and the surrounding landscape. Like Matthiessen, he also intersperses the stories of early Antarctic explorers such as Shackleton and Amundsen.
Are you planning an expedition to Antarctica? Start with these stories:
