Travel to Polar Regions

Life on the Ice: No One Goes to Antarctica Alone

Format: Paperback
Author: Roff Smith
ReleaseDate: 01 February, 2005
Publisher: National Geographic
Rating:

Several trips in one book
For this reason, the book feels a bit disjointed, but it is a great portrait of the place and the people who live and work there today and the support systems that help them from the outside. Roff Smith writes in this book about more than one trip to Antarctica, and in each trip he moves around from base to base to explore the place. Smith is often funny, as well as awestruck. That seems to be the effect the place has on people.

Great book
I was anxious to get an account of "what it is really like" being down there. I've been looking for a book on Antarctica as I will soon be going there in a research support capacity. Smith's accounts of dealing with the US program were especially interesting to me. His writing is humerous, insightful and thoroughly enjoyable to read. After reading this book, I think I have a decent sense of what to expect (his description of the pre-trip paperwork has already proven to be dead-on).

For my purposes, this is by far the best book I've read on this subject. .

Needs Pictures!
7 "Antarctica. I've been fascinated with Antarctica since hearing Vaughan Williams' Sympony No. " This is the first book about the area that I've read. I found it fascinating right from page one. The author wastes no time getting to the ship and the voyage, and does a tremendous job describing the landscape.

However, for a book about a personal journey to a place 99. 9% of the readers will never visit, I found it downright stupid (sorry) that there are NO photographs of this foreign landscape! One of the very first scenes described by the author is how a group of penguins poked around his camera bag, so we know the author took many, many pictures. . . how about sharing a few of them?

That's my only complaint, and the reason for 4 instead of 5 stars. .

Related products:
click image or link for details on these Polar Regions travel books.

	Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica
	On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica (The World As Home)
	Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica
	Lonely Planet Antarctica