The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen, Stephen R. Brown (3.5)
I appreciated why this book was written. Apparently, history has been somewhat skewed by the British interpretation of the validity of Amundsen’s adventures, particularly his ‘race’ to the south pole against Scott. While this author obviously goes to much effort to illustrate the many accomplishments of Amundsen, pleasantly the book does come across as being only slightly biased. He uses newspaper reports and some newly translated documents that had not been used previous. An earlier book did attempt to clarify the events of that race, but here Brown fleshes out the rest of Amundsen’s adventures. I was impressed by the degree of preparation he had, mostly in his early and most successful ventures. His respect for the ways of the Inuit were instrumental in his successes. Compared to other books about a particular adventure (e.g. concerning Magellan and Shackleton), this was not quite as compelling. Brown does a good job of supporting Amundsen as possibly the most successful adventurer, but the pace and ‘tell’ as opposed to ‘show’ slowed it down for me.
