Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition: The Voyage of the Nimrod

On New Year's Day 1908, Ernest Shackleton, a little-known adventurer determined to find fame and fortune by becoming the first man to reach the South Pole, took his tiny ship, Nimrod, south to the mysterious regions of the Antarctic. In the coming year, Shackleton would record the greatest achievements of his career and engage in his most daring adventures, returning home a hero.

Lacking funds and plagued by hunger, cruel weather, and unpredictable terrain, Shackleton and his party accomplished some of the most remarkable feats in the history of exploration. Not only were they the first to climb the active volcano of Mount Erebus, but they trudged hundreds of miles across uncharted wastelands to be the first ever to plant the Union Jack at the South Pole.

Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition is the definitive account of the British Antarctic Expedition. Using extensive research and firsthand accounts-some previously unpublished-Riffenburgh has written a vivid and gripping adventure while providing fascinating insight into the age of British exploration and empire.

Beau Riffenburgh is a historian specializing in exploration, particularly that of the Antarctic, the Arctic, and Africa, and the author of The Myth of the Explorer. A native of California, he earned his doctorate at the University of Cambridge and is currently on staff at the Scott Polar Research Institute, where he is the editor of the Encyclopaedia of the Antarctic and the journal Polar Record.