The last place on Earth
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Pole was the most coveted prize in the fiercely nationalistic modern age of exploration. In the brilliant dual biography, the award-winning writer Roland Huntford re-examines every detail of the great race to the South Pole between Britain's Robert Scott and Norway's Roald Amundsen. Scott, who dies along with four of his men only eleven miles from his next cache of supplies, became Britain's beloved failure, while Amundsen, who not only beat Scott to the Pole but returned alive, was largely forgotten. This account of their race is a gripping, highly readable history that captures the driving ambitions of the era and the complex, often deeply flawed men who were charged with carrying them out. THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH is the first of Huntford's masterly trilogy of polar biographies. It is also the only work on the subject in the English language based on the original Norwegian sources, to which Huntford returned to revise and update this edition.
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4people
2008–2025years
60% recommend40% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- Moreover, you can walk around inside the ship and see the cabins they lived in, indeed an incredible, immersive experience.
Came here to say that Amundsen is a great example of someone who did hard things and made them look easy. Nansen also. And Shackleton, although he didn't make them look easy...
Basically everything written by Roland Huntford about polar exploration is great inspiration. The Last Place on Earth covers Amundsen and Scott (the latter who did difficult things and made them look hard and died.)
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"The Last Place on Earth" - a good (if labored) summary of the races to the north and south poles and their geopolitical impacts.
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- Roald Amundsen --- The first man to reach the south pole. It's not the accomplishment itself, but the way it was accomplished. If interested, read "The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole."
- > We started out on a project on traditional Arctic snacks, but it was really difficult to get them tasty, because the traditional recipes were not made to be tasty. As soon as there’s seal fat included, that gets awfully difficult.
I just finished "The Last Place on Earth", about the race to the south pole, and one of Amundsen's obsessions was with ensuring that he had an experienced arctic cook.
- I've been reading "The Last Place on Earth", and the author is quite disdainful of Scott, who he views as a dilettante who never prepared properly, refused to learn from his mistakes, and who was never involved in an expedition that didn't run out of food.
The last bit is definitely true- he died after four or five days in a blizzard, ten miles from resupply. After heroics coming back from the pole with men collapsing from malnutrition.
