Alone, by Richard E. Byrd (HC, 1938, $4)
Oh my gosh, I bet most young people don't even know who Richard Byrd was, but I certainly can't blame them, because neither did I before I started working here, and found a book written by a member of the expedition.
When I was 14, I stayed up late, and got up early, to watch all of the moon landings. Amazing stuff moon landings, which is why my parents, who never let me stay up late for anything else, let me stay up for them. All of us watching on our little TV screens were in awe of what was going on.
But awesome things had also gone on in the 1930s. Byrd had gone with a bunch of men down to the Antarctic. The plan was for him to go with a few others from the advance camp down to the actual South Pole. Instead, he was forced to decide if no one would go, or if he would go alone. He had gone on other expeditions. In fact during the last 14 years he had gone on 6 other ones- to both Poles as well as other places. He was not a rich man. In between expeditions he was busy lecturing to raise money to pay off expedition debts, as well as to gather money to support his next one.
Byrd did not travel to make money, and he didn't travel to see interesting places. Wrote Byrd, "For there is little enough to see: at one end of the earth a mathematical spot in the center of a vast and empty ocean, and at the other end an equally imaginary spot in the middle of a vast and windy plateau. It's not getting to the pole that counts. It is what you learn of scientific value on the way. Plus the fact that you get there and back without getting killed."
So, Byrd goes alone to the front camp. He stays there for 4 months, alone with a faulty gas stove that gives off more carbon monoxide than it does heat. He gets back without getting killed, but it is a close thing. Byrd may not have made it the moon, but he went to a place almost as unforgiving.
Look for this on the new non-fiction table.
