The Longest Winter

Praise

Praise for The Longest Winter

“[A] gripping scientific adventure story [that] also includes fascinating details about glacial ecology.” —Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review)

“A grand story of six brave men who literally and figuratively pulled together in their race for survival.” —Kirkus

“Best book I ever read on Antarctica.” —George Denton, author of The Fate of Greenland

“This is Antarctic nonfiction at its best. A real page turner that I read in two sittings. Having spent a dozen austral summers on the Antarctic ice, I can tell the true McCoy description of Polar life and teamwork when I read it. This little known tale of Scott’s early South Polar explorers gets into the realities of living and working in the isolated days a century ago before telecoms and e mail. While the well known dramas of the South Polar race are in movies and books, Meredith Hooper tells the almost unknown tale of these extraordinary men of Scott’s team who didn’t go to the Pole but explored and survived for over a year on a diet of only Weddell seal and penguin. Such a tale of extraordinary endurance. Hooper tells this tale intelligently, enchantingly and perceptively, often in the explorer’s own words, since she has spent years studying the men’s diaries at SPRI. What’s more, she has visited the isolated Ross Sea spots where they lived or sailed past. It doesn’t get any better than reading this Antarctic tale to help one imagine what real exploration was like on this extraordinarily inhospitable continent.” —Warren Zapol, author of Anesthesiology