Race to The End: Amundsen, Scott, and the Attainment of the South Pole
MacPhee is the curator of an exhibit running May 2010–January 2011 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City about the geographic and scientific exploration of Antarctica; his volume chronicles the continent’s two most celebrated pioneers. Drawing from and synthesizing the literature about Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott and their epic treks to the South Pole a century ago, MacPhee wends his text around a profusion of imagery that should excite both the novice and veteran reader of polar exploration. Photographs from both leaders’ expeditions and present-day studio poses of artifacts enrich MacPhee’s factual rendering of events and, in the case of Scott, his restrained comments on the reasons for Scott’s and his men’s expiration on their return from the pole. If many of Scott’s decisions were questionable, few then and only the churlish since question the heroism that attaches to his fate. An attractive package, this title will answer immediate requests and might provoke deeper interest in MacPhee’s classic sources, such as Amundsen’s South Pole (1912) and Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s Worst Journey in the World (1937). --Gilbert Taylor