This book is considered one of the great books of exploration, about what Shackleton himself called the last great journey on earth. The book tells of the author's Antarctic expedition in which the Endurance was crushed by the ice, and he and his men made a 600-mile trek across ice and ocean to solid land, and then a 700-mile journey in an open boat to South Georgia, followed by an epic crossing of the uncharted mountains of that island. In this edition the text is illustrated with reproductions of the photographs of Frank Hurley - who accompanied the expedition - working directly from his original prints, and with other material, much of it unpublished, from the Royal Geographical Society and Scott Polar Institute archives.