-
A Wretched and Precarious Situation
- In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
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Publisher's summary
A Kirkus Reviews best nonfiction book of 2016.
A remarkable true story of adventure, betrayal, and survival set in one of the world's most inhospitable places.
In 1906, from atop a snow-swept hill in the ice fields northwest of Greenland, hundreds of miles from another human being, Commander Robert E. Peary spotted a line of mysterious peaks looming in the distance. He called this unexplored realm "Crocker Land". Scientists and explorers agreed that the world-famous explorer had discovered a new continent rising from the frozen Arctic Ocean.
Several years later, two of Peary's disciples, George Borup and Donald MacMillan, assembled a team of amateur adventurers to investigate Crocker Land. Before them lay a chance at the kind of lasting fame enjoyed by Magellan, Columbus, and Captain Cook. While filling in the last blank space on the globe, they might find new species of plants or animals, or even men; in the era of Jules Verne and HG Wells, anything seemed possible. Renowned scientific institutions, and even former president Theodore Roosevelt, rushed to endorse the expedition.
What followed was a sequence of events that none of the explorers could have imagined. Trapped in a true-life adventure story, the men endured howling blizzards, unearthly cold, food shortages, isolation, a fatal boating accident, a drunken sea captain, disease, dissension, and a horrific crime. But the team pushed on through every obstacle, driven forward by the mystery of Crocker Land and faint hopes that they someday would make it home.
Populated with a cast of memorable characters, and based on years of research in previously untapped sources, A Wretched and Precarious Situation is a harrowing Arctic narrative unlike any other.
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Outstanding.
- By Leon Miller on 12-01-15
By: Stephen R. Bown
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The White Darkness
- By: David Grann
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 2 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Henry Worsley spent his life idolizing Ernest Shackleton, the 19th-century polar explorer who tried to become the first person to reach the South Pole and later sought to cross Antarctica on foot. Worsley felt an overpowering connection to those expeditions. In 2008, Worsley set out across Antarctica with two other descendants of Shackleton's crew, battling the freezing, desolate landscape and life-threatening physical exhaustion. He soon felt compelled to go back. In 2015, Worsley bid farewell to his family and embarked on his most perilous quest: to walk across Antarctica alone.
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Will Patton's narration
- By Carol on 01-18-19
By: David Grann
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To the Edges of the Earth
- 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration
- By: Edward J. Larson
- Narrated by: Paul Michael Garcia
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration - set at the world's frozen extremes - lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called "Third Pole", the pole of altitude, located in unexplored heights of the Himalaya. Before the calendar turned, three expeditions had faced death, mutiny, and the harshest conditions on the planet to plant flags at the furthest edges of the Earth.
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brutally honest accounts unbelievable stories
- By Troy Hamilton on 07-17-18
By: Edward J. Larson
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The Cruelest Miles
- The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic
- By: Gay Salisbury, Laney Salisbury
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The year is 1925. It is sixty degrees below zero. The wind sweeps tons of snow over the deep-frozen Alaskan landscape. The nearest railhead is seven hundred miles away. Airplanes cannot fly. The way to Nome is blocked by a treacherous frozen sound, an icebound port, and mountains to the west. But there is a diphtheria epidemic in Nome. The children need serum from the outside world if they are to survive. Their only hope is a few chosen Eskimo drivers and their teams of dogs.
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The Cruelest Miles Makes Exciting Reading
- By Susan Carter on 01-07-04
By: Gay Salisbury, and others
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Erebus
- One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time
- By: Michael Palin
- Narrated by: Michael Palin
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Michael Palin brings the fascinating story of the Erebus and its occupants to life, from its construction as a bomb vessel in 1826 through the flagship years of James Clark Ross’s Antarctic expedition and finally to Sir John Franklin’s quest for the holy grail of navigation - a route through the Northwest Passage, where the ship disappeared into the depths of the sea for more than 150 years. It was rediscovered under the arctic waters in 2014.
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Engrossing story
- By Anonymous User on 10-01-24
By: Michael Palin
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Island of the Blue Foxes
- Disaster and Triumph on the World's Greatest Scientific Expedition
- By: Stephen R. Bown
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The story of the world's largest, longest, and best-financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully told. The immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue.
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Vivid History of Russia's First Contact In Alaska
- By Neil Ring on 09-01-18
By: Stephen R. Bown
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Farther Than Any Man
- The Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook
- By: Martin Dugard
- Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the annals of seafaring and exploration, there is one name that immediately evokes visions of the open ocean, billowing sails, visiting strange, exotic lands previously uncharted, and civilizations never before encountered - Captain James Cook. Full of realistic action, lush descriptions of places and events, and fascinating historical characters such as King George III and the soon-to-be-notorious Master William Bligh, Dugard's gripping account of the life and death of Captain James Cook is a thrilling story of a discoverer hell-bent on going farther than any man.
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Sloppy History
- By Kyle P. Dalton on 04-06-18
By: Martin Dugard
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Jack London
- An American Life
- By: Earle Labor
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jack London was born a working class, fatherless Californian in 1876. In his youth, he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast - an oyster pirate, a hobo, a sailor, and a prospector by turns. He spent his brief life rapidly accumulating the experiences that would inform his acclaimed best-selling books The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf.
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Glad I chose this
- By SherryH on 04-14-19
By: Earle Labor
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Disappointment River
- Finding and Losing the Northwest Passage
- By: Brian Castner
- Narrated by: Brian Castner
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Disappointment River is a dual historical narrative and travel memoir that at once transports listeners back to the heroic age of North American exploration and places them in a still rugged but increasingly fragile Arctic wilderness in the process of profound alteration by the dual forces of energy extraction and climate change.
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Excellent
- By Jean on 05-06-18
By: Brian Castner
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Into Africa
- The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone
- By: Martin Dugard
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" So goes the signature introduction of New York Herald star journalist Henry Morton Stanley to renowned explorer Dr. David Livingstone, who had been missing for six years in the wilds of Africa. Into Africa ushers us into the meeting of these remarkable men. In 1866, when Livingstone journeyed into the heart of the African continent in search of the Nile's source, the land was rough, unknown to Europeans, and inhabited by man-eating tribes.
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Riveting
- By Gene on 04-01-04
By: Martin Dugard
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The Stowaway
- A Young Man's Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica
- By: Laurie Gwen Shapiro
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over, and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet's final frontier? The night before the expedition's flagship launched, Billy Gawronski - a skinny, first-generation New York City high schooler desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business - jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard. Could he get away with it?
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A Nice Little Story About A Nice Young Man...
- By Gillian on 01-23-18
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81 Days Below Zero
- The Incredible Survival Story of a World War II Pilot in Alaska's Frozen Wilderness
- By: Brian Murphy, Toula Vlahou
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The untold story of Leon Crane, the only surviving crew member of a World War II B-24 crash on a remote mountain near the Arctic Circle, who managed to stay alive 81 days in sub-zero temperature by making peace with nature, and end his ordeal by walking along a river to safety. Part World War II story, part Alaskan adventure story, part survival story, and even part inspirational story, this is what we call " a good listen".
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Diluted and Distracted
- By C. Howe on 09-27-15
By: Brian Murphy, and others
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Gold Diggers
- Striking It Rich in the Klondike
- By: Charlotte Gray
- Narrated by: Steven Cooper
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Between 1896 and 1899, thousands of people lured by gold braved a grueling journey into the remote wilderness of North America. Within two years, Dawson City, in the Canadian Yukon, grew from a mining camp of four hundred to a raucous town of more than thirty thousand. The stampede to the Klondike was the last great gold rush in history. Scurvy, dysentery, frostbite, and starvation stalked all who dared to be in Dawson. And yet the possibilities attracted people from all walks of life.
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Disappointed...
- By Michael McGrath on 01-29-14
By: Charlotte Gray
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In the summer of 1913, the wooden-hulled brigantine Karluk departed Canada for the Arctic Ocean. At the helm was Captain Bob Bartlett, considered the world’s greatest living ice navigator. The expedition’s visionary leader was a flamboyant impresario named Vilhjalmur Stefansson hungry for fame. Just six weeks after the Karluk departed, giant ice floes closed in around her. As the ship became icebound, Stefansson disembarked with five companions and struck out on what he claimed was a 10-day caribou hunting trip. Most on board would never see him again.
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As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration - set at the world's frozen extremes - lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called "Third Pole", the pole of altitude, located in unexplored heights of the Himalaya. Before the calendar turned, three expeditions had faced death, mutiny, and the harshest conditions on the planet to plant flags at the furthest edges of the Earth.
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brutally honest accounts unbelievable stories
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Ice Ghosts weaves together the epic story of the Lost Franklin Expedition of 1845 - whose two ships and crew of 129 were lost to the Arctic ice - with the modern tale of the scientists, divers, and local Inuit behind the incredible discovery of the flagship's wreck in 2014. Paul Watson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was on the icebreaker that led the discovery expedition, tells a fast-paced historical adventure story: Sir John Franklin and the crew of the HMS Erebus and Terror setting off in search of the fabled Northwest Passage.
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Flawed Writing Dashes High Hopes :(
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Put Another Log on the Fire
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North to the Night
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In June 1994, Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, set off in their 36-foot sailboat to explore the hauntingly beautiful world of icebergs, tundra, and fjords lying high above the Arctic Circle. Four months later, unexpected events would trap Simon alone on his boat, frozen in ice 100 miles from the nearest settlement, with the long polar night stretching into darkness for months to come.
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Note worthy
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Wanderlust
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Deep in the Arctic wilderness, Peter Freuchen awoke to find himself buried alive under the snow. During a sudden blizzard the night before, he had taken shelter underneath his dogsled and become trapped there while he slept. Now, as feeling drained from his body, he managed to claw a hole through the ice only to find himself in even greater danger: his beard, wet with condensation from his struggling breath, had frozen to his sled runners and lashed his head in place, exposing it to icy winds that needed only a few minutes to kill him. If Freuchen could escape that, he could escape anything.
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In the Kingdom of Ice
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In the late nineteenth century, people were obsessed by one of the last unmapped areas of the globe: The North Pole. No one knew what existed beyond the fortress of ice rimming the northern oceans. On July 8, 1879, the USS Jeannette set sail from San Francisco to cheering crowds in the grip of "Arctic Fever." The ship sailed into uncharted seas, but soon was trapped in pack ice. Two years into the harrowing voyage, the hull was breached. Amid the rush of water and the shrieks of breaking wooden boards, the crew abandoned the ship.
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Superb tale that unravels at an iceburg's pace
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By: Hampton Sides
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Race for the South Pole
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For the first time ever Roland Huntford presents each man's account of the race to the South Pole in their own words. In 1910, Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen set sail for Antarctica, each from his own starting point, and the epic race for the South Pole was on. 2010 marks the centenary of the last great race of terrestrial discovery. For the first time Scott's unedited diary entries run alongside those of Amundsen and Bjaaland, never before translated into English.
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Great account, might be better in hard copy
- By Error9312 on 05-24-22
By: Roland Huntford
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Island of the Lost
- Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
- By: Joan Druett
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Auckland Island is a godforsaken place in the middle of the Southern Ocean, 285 miles south of New Zealand. With year-round freezing rain and howling winds, it is one of the most forbidding places in the world. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death. In 1864, Captain Thomas Musgrave and his crew of four aboard the schooner Grafton wreck on the southern end of the island. Utterly alone in a dense coastal forest, plagued by stinging blowflies and relentless rain, Captain Musgrave inspires his men to take action.
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One of the Best Stories Ever Told!
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By: Joan Druett
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Batavia
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The story begins in 1629, when the pride of the Dutch East India Company, the Batavia, is on its maiden voyage en route from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies, laden down with the greatest treasure to leave Holland. The magnificent ship is already boiling over with a mutinous plot that is just about to break into the open when, just off the coast of Western Australia, it strikes an unseen reef in the middle of the night.
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Disaster, Mutiny, Murder, Survival
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The Last Viking
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The Last Viking unravels the life of the man who stands head and shoulders above all those who raced to map the last corners of the world. In 1900, the four great geographical mysteries - the Northwest Passage, the Northeast Passage, the South Pole, and the North Pole - remained blank spots on the globe. Within twenty years Roald Amundsen would claim all four prizes.
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Outstanding.
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What listeners say about A Wretched and Precarious Situation
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Story
- ThunderInTheSun
- 02-19-20
If you're the adventurous type.....
Then dive into the world of Artic exploration with its swelling blue seas and white-caps, it's massive blue-white icebergs, and it's expansive whiteness of nothingness. Yet, to the explorer, there is in that nothingness of white, everything. Those of us, myself included, who now live vicariously through books such as this, will not be disappointed in this Illyad-like adventure story which has it all. As in any good adventure story, this Artic exploration holds the promise of discovery, the certainty of danger, the brutality of death, the heart of romanticism, and the soul of a philosopher-poet. Such a tale told in an audio book is a real treat, especially if you have maps in front of you to help trace the path trod by these brave and daring men seemingly made of
the same grit, strength, and relentlessness as the northern-most terrain and weather. Beyond that, the narrator did a beyond superb job of telling the tale with a variety of a cast of characters mixed with passion and composure. Five stars across the board!!!
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- James E. Pfeffer
- 03-24-24
Unlike Job, They Volunteered
Biblical Job suffered misfortune enough to test anyone’s faith in God. As the title here declares, these brave explorers found their faith similarly challenged in the reality of Crockerland.
As long as the party pursues its polar goal, the book captivates and sweeps the reader along with the men. Alas, when Crockerland plays its seminal role in the story, the book still has several hours to go. The work continues to entertain then, but not as much because the balloon starts to leak.
The narrator is truly first class. The author does an excellent job with the material. The facts are what they are. He can’t change them. But he does wonderful work to tell them as vividly and compellingly as possible.
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- Kent Lanigan
- 01-10-18
Dry history
This was a very dry straight forward history. Partly because most arctic exploration is a story of hardship and disappointment and of course the shadow of shackleton’s shadow looms over all polar exploration. But still feel the story could have had more life. The narrators voice and tone were fine but his pronunciation of words like Inuit were miserable. The good news is a much great appreciation for Macmillan who is often under peary’s shadow. Would like to learn more about his adventures in the Bowdoin. My favorite thing of the book is learning that I can sign my name just like Macmillan with bowdoin ‘98 exactly 100 years between our graduations.
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- lisa kadison
- 06-23-23
another good Arctic expedition story
While not as exciting as The Endurance or The Man Who Ate his Boots, this still hit the spot for a good and inspiring adventure story. Well written with lots of details. good narration too
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- honestengine
- 06-25-23
massively detailed
Apparently deeply researched, the stories within the story develop coherently, and give a richness to the arctic exploration adventure. lots of the expected challenges arise, along with plenty of unusual twists. the author takes us all the way to the end of each man's story, which fills in some interesting details near the end. it's a long book, but that seemed fitting considering the time span involved. the reader kept the pace well, and felt personable.
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- Kat
- 01-30-18
it all comes together at the end
This was a pretty good, well-researched book. It has a lot of characters so that gets a little confusing as the book goes on. I'm glad to have finished it but I dont know if I got the most out of it, because the same events seem to happen a number of times and it is very easy to lose track of the narrative. That said, I found myself riveted to the last third of the book. (ok maybe the last quarter) since the list of characters was thinning out and made it a bit more simplified. I dont mean to imply the book is poorly written - it is a miraculously well-woven book and I can't imagine it having been done better while still including so. much. information. I do think, however, if it had been maybe two thirds the length, it could have been condensed to the most juicy & fascinating events and I would have finished it a lot faster. Then again it was written a lot more like a giant (sometimes dry) essay almost, so it seems clear the goal was more facts and backstory rather than being juicy and easy to read. I liked it a lot more once I finished it, because everything really wraps up nicely in the end.
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- enya keshet
- 08-04-18
Captivating!
I had some doubts choosing this book. What could be told that I had not heard before in North Pole excursion books. This book tells the human story of McMillan's expedition in an interesting, lively flow, never becoming repetitive or boring. A wonderful book.
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- Lance Klein
- 09-16-17
Outstanding book!
Fascinating story expertly woven together from first person accounts - a piece of forgotten history that needed to be uncovered.
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- Ginger 3701
- 08-24-20
Overrated.
I did indeed struggle to finish this highly overrated book. No detail was too small to include in this book. The story could have been told in 3 hours. At times I completely tuned out and when I picked it up again realised I had missed nothing. I wanted to demand it get to the point yet when it did I hardly was aware of it. Wish I had not wasted this credit. The narration wasn't THAT bad. He simply had a long, drawn out, boring, story to tell. Spend credits on " Endurance " and skip this sleeper.
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2 people found this helpful