Customer Reviews

Usual great style from Polar writer - By: Tilly, 07 Mar 2008
A tiny museumin Castletownbere gave me an tantilising introduction to Tom Crean, & an Amazon search then introduced me to Michael Smith & The Unsung Hero. I just loved it - a wonderful heoric tale by a very skilled author, & having fallen madlyin love with Tom Crean I have now read just about everything there is on Antartic Exploration at the turn of the Century. This book is of the period half a century earlier & is writtenin the same wonderful style, where Michael Smith brings into your life a little known & probably even less admired hero. The book covers Crozier's many travels into both the Artic & Antartic, & takes us to the time when the latter was being explored for the first time, & most interesting, getting named. So those coves & coasts & mountains - Ross Shelf, Cape Crozier, Mount Terror & Mount Erebus etc, all come from Croziers era. Also, & so disappointingly, came all those bad habits that plagued the later explorations - like dependancy on man hauling, not using locally caught game, using canvas tents etc.
This is just a great book - just one small criticism - the picture reproduction is lousy & it desperately needs a couple of detailed maps at the beginning, so you can keep referring back, rather than try & find the rather undetailed ones hiddenin the text.
Mr Smith - I've read both your Tom Crean books - please find another 'unsung hero' for us!