Ernest Shackleton is one of history's great explorers; an extraordinary character who pioneered the path to the South Pole over 100 years ago and became a dominant figure in Antarctic discovery. A charismatic personality; his incredible adventures on four expeditions to the Antarctic have captivated generations. He joined the Empire’s last great endeavor of exploration: to conquer the South Pole with Scott on the Discovery expedition. A clash with Scott led to Shackleton being ordered home and started a bitter feud between the two. Shackleton's riposte was the Nimrod expedition; which uncovered the route to the Pole and honed the leadership skills that later encouraged men to overcome unimaginable hardship on the Endurance expedition of 1914. But Shackleton was a flawed character whose chaotic private life; marked by romantic affairs; unfulfilled ambitions; and failed business ventures; contrasted with celebrity status as the leading explorer. Persistent money problems left his men unpaid and his family with debts.Drawing on extensive research of original diaries; letters; and many other publications; Michael Smith brings a fresh perspective to the heroic age of Polar exploration; which was dominated by Shackleton's complex; compelling; and enduringly fascinating story.
Gould Dudley C 1999-06-01Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .87 x 6.00l; 1.26 #File Name: 1681623099390 pagesYou Tremble Body
Review
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. "Agnostic in a Foxhole" writes gripping; moving memoirs....By Clipper Ship Book StoreAuthor dudley c. gould; an 80-year-old veteran of the Korean war; has produced in his YOU TREMBLE BODY and extraordinary and highly individual account of what it's like to be an agnostic in the foxholes of Korea.gould; who spells his name in lower case after a meeting many years ago with e.e.cummings; says in fact that the one thing never in a foxhole was a chaplain!This beautifully written book is rich in quotations and philosophical observations and tells it very much as it is in war--ugly and miserable. Gould points out that the Korean war might not have been won without the Mexican-American soldiers who played such a part in it; and at one point he must deal with the sudden death of one such; Jesus Carlos Rodriguez:"I learned unquestionably from Sergeant Rodriguez that night this is how worship and prayers got started--terrible cries of hurt from a mountaintop--and that night Jesus got it so savagely I learned for a fact; as Lucretius the Roman philosopher noted; fear of death is the mother of all gods....No concerned valkyries lifted our tattered heroes to Valhalla; no Greek maidens bathed them and anointed them in sweet-smelling oils and carried them on their shields to Elysium fields. No; they were poor abandoned puppies dumped beside a busy highway; crumpled; black dried blood; discarded lumps of trash; vain; choked-off cries to heaven; where art thou; father of dogfaces?"Lt. gould's big; powerful book is illustrated throughout by dramatic; sometimes shocking photographs. The horrors and braveries of war are well-documented in a sometimes stark; sometimes poetic; text:"...the cool Caucasian God watched wholesale dying with sublime detachment; day after unhappy day; night upon fearful night; there amid the stench of disappearing buddies and saith naught; and those marked by the evil one for the next deaths; trained by rote to beseech God; screamed his sacred name in angry goddammits!...They didn't die clean; white-sheeted deaths and come to rest in flower-covered pink-satin-lined polished mahogany caskets; they went twisting into the ground where they got it; some dead before landing; and there was no hallowed viewing of their cleverly waxed replacement flesh and rouged remains in well-staged funeral parlor dramas...rather the bedlam of hell erupting as they left us; an occasional curse or choked-off plea to save his life; surprise; half-angry reaction to pain and the terrible power of the hit; a sudden final; pathetic sinking; meeting Death lying down on bare ground...."YOU TREMBLE BODY is a beautifully written; strongly felt autobiography of a brave decorated soldier who served his country beyond the call of duty but who did so with reservations about the presence of a deity who cared about soldiers; war; and death. The day-to-day realities prevented any such rosy-eyed fantasy. And the result of his philosophical queries; religious investigations and poetic excursions will surprise; upset; and recalibrate the reader's ideas about what many people take for granted about belief and imaginary religion.
