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Sir Edmund Hillary 1919-2008

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The Adventurer's Handbook: Life Lessons from History's Great Explorers

By Mick Conefrey
ISBN 0060849983
Hardcover, 224pp
February 2006
Harper Collins

Review by Club staff Jeff Stolzer

This delightful little volume offers both a charming, informative, and slightly irreverent look at some of history's greatest expeditions as well as practical advice for aspiring explorers. Author Mick Conefrey is a filmmaker who has made award-winning documentaries on Arctic exploration and Himalayan mountaineering and recently produced the BBC's anniversary film commemorating the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953.

Conefrey understands that expeditions are individual projects that have to be managed, so he organizes his book into chapters that cover an expedition's different stages: Getting Started, Getting Going, Getting Along, Getting There, and Getting Back. Within each of these chapters, he cites examples from famous expeditions to illustrate the qualities that he believes a successful explorer must exemplify: adaptability, ambition, stamina, self-belief, doggedness, curiosity, optimism, authority, hardiness…and fundraising ability.

Robert Peary is singled out by Conefrey as the greatest fundraiser in the history of twentieth century exploration, and the author delineates the multitude of imaginative ways that the co-discoverer of the North Pole managed to raise money for his expeditions. Conefrey also does a masterful job of delineating the contrasting approaches that Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen took in designing their competing expeditions to be the first to reach the South Pole.

The book offers many useful and interesting sidebars, ranging from Peary's recipe for Pemmican to a list of George Mallory's gear for his 1924 attempt on Everest (contrasted with the gear Peter Hillary used in 2002 for his Everest expedition) to extracts from Captain James Cook's 1771 diary. All in all, The Adventurer's Handbook uses the wisdom discerned from well-known expeditions of the past to provide useful information to explorers and adventurers keen on pursuing exploration in the present.


 
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