This is a fine but not spectacular book. I believe the target audience was for non-adults. Shakelton's story is truly amazing. I cannot begin to imagine the guts it took to lead his men to survival.

The issue I had with the book was that it did not have an easy to reference map of Shakelton and his men's travels until more than halfway through the book. I found myself accessing an atlas to track their movements. This wasn't mere curiosity either. The magnitude of the ship's movement and the travel of the men if only understood looking at a map. Big error. The other problem I had was that the author mentions that many of the men had kept very emotional and detailed journals. Guess what? We don't get to read any of it. That was another poor decision. Even small excerpts or quotes would have been welcome. Finally, some of the pictures were too small and this is a nice sized hardcover book.

A middle school student would enjoy this most. ( )