<P><B>The dramatic true story of the crossing of Antarctica</B></P><P>In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton embarked on what he called "the last great polar journey"—the . His expedition ended in disaster, with the <I>Endurance</I> crushed and the frozen corpses of three explorers left on the Antarctic plateau. Forty years later Vivian Fuchs and Edmund Hillary, the hero of Everest, set out to succeed where Shackleton had failed—this is the full account of their travels. It details how despite the passage of four decades, the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955–58 encountered many of the obstacles that had so hindered Shackleton—a chronic shortage of funds, inadequate equipment, and an early onset of pack ice. Even more disastrously, it also suffered from a clash of personalities so severe that it came close to destroying the expedition from within. Based upon interviews with the survivors and upon contemporary diaries and letters, this book tells for the first time the epic story of this last great expedition of the "Heroic Age" of Antarctic exploration.