This book is not about penguins, although they do make an appearance. It’s more of a misadventure story: the kind of book that some men write about war. In this case, the battles are against nature: the intense cold, the unforgiving, unexplored polar wilderness, the isolation, insomnia, boredom, terror and grief that men fought with grit and gallows humor at the bottom of the world. In 1956, a bright, young man, trying to make his mark at NBC News, volunteers to go to the Antarctic with an audacious ex-Marine combat cameraman to produce TV documentaries. They wind up focusing – not on penguins – but on tough-talking Seabees, daring naval aviators and rugged scientists, all working in harsh conditions with little or no public recognition. His account of documenting the work of the men of Operation Deepfreeze who built the polar scientific bases for the International Geophysical Year is sometimes hilarious, but often irreverent, cynical and heartbreaking. According to the men he covered back then, his book paints a true picture of what being down there “on the ice” was really like for them.
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