Alone

When Admiral Richard E. Byrd set out on his second Antarctic expedition in 1934, he was already an international hero for having piloted the first flights over the North and South Poles. His plan for this latest adventure was to spend six months alone near the bottom of the world, gathering weather data and indulging his desire “to taste peace and quiet long enough to know how good they really are.” But early on things went terribly wrong. Isolated in the pervasive polar night with no hope of release until spring, Byrd began suffering inexplicable symptoms of mental and physical illness. By the time he discovered that carbon monoxide from a defective stovepipe was poisoning him, Byrd was already engaged in a monumental struggle to save his life and preserve his sanity.

When Alone was first published in 1938, it became an enormous bestseller. This edition keeps alive Byrd’s unforgettable narrative for new generations of readers.

 (34 customer reviews)

The polar explorer Richard E. Byrd's "Alone" is an absolutely gripping narrative of his winter-over at a remote weather station in the Antarctic in 1934. Byrd, the leader of a U.S. polar expedition based at "Little America" on the Ross Ice Shelf, had intended to place a three-man station in the interior of the Antarctic to gather valuable weather data. Circumstances drove him to limit the crew to just one person, and rather than subject anyone else to the accompanying dangers, Byrd elected to man the station by himself. Byrd's account of his stay, probably written with the assistance of his good friend Charles Murphy, captures the mundane details of survival in complete darkness and staggeringly cold temperatures. It also candidly relates his struggles to survive relentless solitude and an increasingly dangerous equipment failure that came near to taking his life.

Byrd writes from another era, when mechanization was just beginning to have a major impact on exploration...Read more

This book has the capacity to fundamentally alter the way one perceives nature and life. However, the most striking aspect of the book was Byrd's view of religion. While religious discussion does not consume a large portion of the text, Byrd's insights into the matter are unique and very interesting, especially to to the freethinking agnostic. Without catering to a particular denomination, his take on religion is a self-reliant, logical, hearty one that somehow manages to be spiritual and graceful at the same time. This is due, in large part, to the fact that so much of this view is based on his admiration and astonishment at the complexities of nature. A truly inspiring piece of work, it can crack chinks into the souls of even hardened skeptics and remind us all that life is a panorama of personal emotional relationships with others that make our own continued survival worthwhile.

"Cold does queer things. At 50° below zero a flashlight dies out in your hand. At -55° kerosene will freeze. At -60° rubber turns brittle." These are some of Byrd's observations from his surreal solo expedition to the heart of Antarctica's night.

The expedition took place from March - August of 1934. Byrd, a former Navy officer, rugged explorer, decides to push the envelope doing something no man had ever tried before. He was to monitor the weather while living in a shack buried in snow, by himself, for the entire night-time period that covered almost 6 months.

Although the literary value regarding this book could be argued, it is nevertheless a great story based on a unique social experiment. Byrd's trail of thoughts veers from rational, to ridiculous. His mood is altered by the extreme struggles that he has to endure to serve science. However, one can pick up the vibe that he wanted to do this for himself as much as for science. He was thrilled at first, but...Read more