The Coldest March: Scott`s Fatal Antarctic Expedition
The icy deaths of Robert Falcon Scott and his companions on their return  from the South Pole in 1912 made them English icons of courage and sacrifice.  Soon, however, Scott's judgments and decisions were questioned, and his  reputation became one of inept bungler rather than heroic pioneer. Susan  Solomon, senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  in Colorado, approaches Scott's story from a meteorologist's point of view. She  shows that the three weeks from February 27 to March 19, during which the  explorers fell further and further behind the daily distances they had to cover  in order to survive, were far colder than normal. Unusual blizzards of wet snow  had already slowed the party and depleted their provisions and strength. Without  these once-in-a-decade phenomena, Solomon believes the party would have returned  to its base on the Ross Sea--second after Roald Amundsen in the race to the  Pole, but safely. She opens each chapter with comments from a hypothetical  modern visitor to Antarctica, presumably to give a wider context to the human  drama of the last century, though this reviewer finds them inappropriate. She  enriches her narratives of Scott's two Antarctic expeditions with vintage  photographs and tables of meteorological data that highlight the explorers'  achievements. Their determination was pitted against the worst weather in the  world. Scott's story has been told many times before, but its weather  information makesThe Coldest Marcha useful addition to the literature.--John Stevenson