The White Darkness

Henry Worsley used to be a devoted husband and father and a decorated British special forces officer who believed in honor and sacrifice. He used to be also a man obsessed. He spent his life idolizing Ernest Shackleton, the nineteenth-century polar explorer, who tried to develop into the first person to succeed in the South Pole, and later sought to cross Antarctica on foot. Shackleton never completed his journeys, but he repeatedly rescued his men from certain death, and emerged as one of the crucial greatest leaders in history.

Worsley felt an overpowering connection to those expeditions. He used to be related to one of Shackleton’s men, Frank Worsley, and spent a fortune collecting artifacts from their epic treks across the continent. He modeled his military command on Shackleton’s legendary skills and used to be made up our minds to measure his own powers of endurance against them. He would succeed where Shackleton had failed, in the most brutal landscape on this planet.

In 2008, Worsley set out across Antarctica with two other descendants of Shackleton’s crew, battling the freezing, desolate landscape, life-threatening physical exhaustion, and hidden crevasses. Yet when he returned home he felt compelled to return. On November 13, 2015, at age 55, Worsley bid farewell to his family and embarked on his most perilous quest: to walk across Antarctica alone. David Grann tells Worsley’s remarkable story with the intensity and power that have led him to be called “simply the best narrative nonfiction creator working today.” Illustrated with more than fifty stunning photographs from Worsley’s and Shackleton’s journeys,

Look for David Grann’s up to date bestselling book, The Wager!