The story of Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1912-1914. The team provided lots of real scientific information about the continent. Mawson endured a terrible sledge journey into the interior and back, during which both of his human companions and all their dogs perished. ( )

This book conveys the true story of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE), led by Australian explorer Douglas Mawson. Mawson was a key contributor to the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration; however, many people do not carry his name on the “tip of the tongue” as they do the names of Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen. While the title suggests this is the story of Mawson’s miraculous survival in the wake of the death of his two companions while on an exploratory excursion, it is, in fact, a great deal more comprehensive. It provides the background and context for the AAE, including past experiences, preparations for the trip, and details about the lives of several of the participants. The author is adept at selecting passages from the diaries of the crew without getting carried away with extraneous details. We get a sense of Mawson as a scientist at heart, not concerned with the competitive race to the pole, but interested in mapping uncharted territory and conducting experiments to understand this frozen continent. Overall, I enjoyed the book very much. To me, the most engrossing chapters were related to the survival story. The other parts were interesting but understandably not quite as riveting. Recommended to readers interested in survival stories and the history of polar exploration. ( )

It's a toss up for me whether this or the classic [b:Mawson's Will|141357|Mawson's Will|Lennard Bickel|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1172122417s/141357.jpg|136324] is the better book. While [a:Lennard Bickel|81489|Lennard Bickel|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s book is probably slightly more suspenseful, it is short on detail at times. That is not the case here, Roberts doesn't skimp on the detail while still maintaining the suspense of the story. In some cases the details increase the awe that Mawson's achievement was, since even particular days consisted of superhuman accomplishments. Roberts also has much more about the psychologically creepy nightmare that was wintering over a second year (with a lunatic no less) in "the windiest place on earth," basically skipped except for a few paragraphs in the Bickel book.

To summarize in the TV Guide tradition, in 1912 Dr. Douglas Mawson and Dr. Xavier Mertz are 300 miles from home base in Antarctica when their companion Belgrave Ninnis disappears down a crevasse with his sledge, dog team (most of their dogs), and most of their food and gear, including their tent. With a week and a half of food left for the two men and only a few of the dogs, Mawson and Mertz have to cross 300 miles man hauling a sledge with what's left of their gear and get back to the coast to be picked up. What Mawson and Mertz will undergo, and hopefully overcome, has been called the "greatest human survival story ever." This was from Sir Edmund Hillary and Sir Ernest Shackleton, no survival slouches either.

Mawson may also be the greatest polar explorer of the heroic era, but is always overshadowed by the better known Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen. Every Australian knows of Mawson but few outside of Australia know of his feat and accomplishment.

The book has an extensive index (really valuable), maps, and a number of black and white photos from the heroic age of polar exploration. The book is extensively researched and Roberts sought out and had made available to him sources that Bickel hadn't. Roberts particularly calls into question Bickel's conclusion that Vitamin A poisoning from dog liver was the primary cause of Mertz's and Mawson's weakening, citing other factors such as exposure, scurvy, and just plain starvation as possibly equally to blame. We'll never know. ( )

"Alone on the Ice", by David Roberts, is subtitled "The greatest survival story in the history of exploration". It describes the early 20th century explorations of Antarctica, and specifically the legendary journey of Australia's great explorer, Douglas Mawson. Mawson's journey is indeed heroic, facing seeming insurmountable odds and trekking alone, after the rest of his party had died, basically without food or sufficient equipment, for weeks in the freezing arctic to his rescue station. Taking nothing from Mawson's strength and fortitude, I nonetheless preferred Caroline Alexander's book "The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition" for a captivating story of arctic survival. While both books describe unbelievable cold and impossibility, the Shackleton story was more focused, while David Roberts' book strayed here and there in describing several other arctic explorations. But clearly, either will give you a chilling description of the hardships all individuals and explorers had to endure during this age of great arctic exploration. ( )

I love to read about explorers. Not the ones who traversed the world murdering indigenous people to fill the coffers of their respective countries, but those men who were larger than life, fighting against the elements in the name of science, discovery and documentation. Men like Sir Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay struggling up Mount Everest, or Ernest Shackleton striking out across the ice to find the South Pole. Men struggling to fulfill their dreams, fighting to survive dangerous conditions while striving to go where no human being has ever been before.

Alone on the Ice is about Douglas Mowson and other explorers who struggled and died in the early 1900's exploring Antarctica. Many of their names are forgotten, overshadowed by the larger than life legends of Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen. I had never heard of Mowson before I read this book. I'm sure I had read his name before as part of Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition in 1907, but other than a name listed as part of Shackleton's party, I knew nothing about him. Mowson's story grabbed my complete attention immediately because he was driven, not by a sense of competition to be first (as Shackleton, Scott and others), but by a deep sense of wonder at being the first human being to traverse and scientifically document unexplored areas of the world.

The main portion of the story is about the Australasian Antarctic Expedition led by Mowson from 1911-1913. But it also gives information about other earlier expeditions, such as Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, because the background is essential to understanding Mowson and the difficulties he and others had already faced in Antarctica. Roberts provides many details and excerpts from several explorer's personal journals, plus photographs.

I can't even imagine what it was like for these men struggling to walk miles each day, pulling sledges filled with supplies. These sledges could weigh 600-1000 lbs. Sometimes they had to move only part of their equipment at a time. That meant walking several miles, dumping off equipment and supplies, then doubling back to get the rest of their gear and walking those same miles again. All in subzero weather, across dangerous ice. Not only was the weather dangerously cold, but there was the constant threat of injury or illness. Many times they lost men, supplies and dogs when they broke through thin ice sheets covering deep crevasses in the arctic ice. Desperation and starvation brought about dangerous physical illnesses. At times when food stores were low, the men were forced to eat sled dogs. The men didn't know that husky liver contains too much vitamin A,and if ingested can cause severe illness. They were starving and ate injured or weak sled dogs to stay alive, not knowing that this very desperation was only making them more ill.

This book is not a fictionalized account. It is a non-fiction, true account of these men and their expeditions in Antarctica, giving lots of details about their daily challenges, deaths and extreme conditions. Roberts did an excellent job pulling information from various explorer's personal journals to give a true sense of who Mowson was and to document the expeditions leading up to the AAE and Mowson's survival after losing the rest of his party in 1913.

I highly recommend this book to anyone w ho enjoys reading about polar exploration. I definitely want to read more about the polar explorers who got lost in the shadow of more famous men like Shackleton and Scott. I want to know about the men who were out of the limelight and more focused on science and exploration. This story was a joy to read, and I am still in awe of men like Mowson who were willing to put their lives on the line over and over again to learn all they could about the Earth and its wonders.
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