Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39196 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

Mawson's Will
Without being fully aware of the history of the polar expeditions or polar travel in general, I began this book expecting a great adventure story and nothing more. This book more than delivered in that respect. Not only is it immensely easy to read, but I found it difficult to put down and became completely engrossed in the story that unfolded. I got choked up a great deal towards the end and felt anxious and exhausted along with the people in the book. For the two days that it took to read, I lived the fears and exhaustion along with the author and finished the book feeling wrung out, yet strangely exhilarated. I can not imagine what it must be like to travel in such a hostile environment, but this book goes some way to helping you picture what it may of been like. It also has some great old photography. If you like survival stories or are interested in the polar expeditions you must add this book to your library, it is a superb read that will keep you gripped throughout. Highly recommended.

Jaw dropping survival story.
Douglas Mawson is someone who doesn't get the credit he deserves ; especially in comparison to Robert Scott. A member of the 1907 Nimrod expedition, he organised his own trip to the land south of Australia in 1913, and this excellent book is the tale of that trip.

Mawson had to contend not only with the death in a crevasse of his companion Ninnis, but had to witness the slow descent into madness and death of his other companion, Mertz, then made his way hundreds of miles back to his base at Cape Dennison, surviving on left over scraps and eating his dogs.

Sometimes it is easier to die like Scott than to continue, (Cherry Garrard makes a similar point in "The Worst Journey in the World"), graphically illustrated when Mawson falls into a crevasse, and somehow pulled himself out. But survive he did,and lived to a ripe old age.

The ultimate survival story
Douglas Mawson chose not to join the race for the South Pole with the ill-fated Scott. Instead of ego aggrandisement, Mawson chose science and set out on a smaller geologic expedition of another area of the frozen South. An experienced polar explorer, Mawson began with a party of two others, but eventually the group of three was reduced to the indefatigible Mawson alone. Bickel's rendition of Mawson's solitary struggle is based on Mawson's own journals of a story that deserves a place ahead of all the accounts of Scott and Shakleton. Bickel captures well the character of the man and, even more, the psychological terrors to which Mawson refused to succumb as he battled the physical obstacles. More than twenty years after this reviewer's first reading, Mawson's Will stands as a premier account of an individual's determination to survive.