Twenty-eight men stood on a desolate Antarctic ice floe one thousand miles from the nearest human contact. In a few months the ice would melt. To survive they would have to be safely on land before that happened—if they did not starve first. The odds were stacked against them. Facing all the horrors that the Antarctic could bring to bear, including numbing cold and the worst weather on the globe, they could freeze, starve, or drown. The single advantage they did have, however, proved decisive. They were led by Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922). This saga is their tale and that of the man who led them.

T. H. Baughman is a professor of history at the University of Central Oklahoma and the author of several books, including Before the Heroes Came: Antarctica in the 1890s and Pilgrims on the Ice: Robert Falcon Scott's First Antarctic Expedition, both available in Bison Books editions.