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51 of 53 found the following review helpful:
 A Classic Endures Nov 19, 2005
By D. S. Thurlow
The polar explorer Richard E. Byrd's "Alone" is an absolutely gripping narrative of his winter-over at a remote weather station in the Antarctic in 1934. Byrd, the leader of a U.S. polar expedition based at "Little America" on the Ross Ice Shelf, had intended to place a three-man station in the interior of the Antarctic to gather valuable weather data. Circumstances drove him to limit the crew to just one person, and rather than subject anyone else to the accompanying dangers, Byrd elected to man the station by himself. Byrd's account of his stay, probably written with the assistance of his good friend Charles Murphy, captures the mundane details of survival in complete darkness and staggeringly cold temperatures. It also candidly relates his struggles to survive relentless solitude and an increasingly dangerous equipment failure that came near to taking his life.
Byrd writes from another era, when mechanization was just beginning to have a major impact on exploration in extreme environments and when the interior of the Antarctic was still very much a forbidding place, nearly as remote to the world of 1934 as the surface of the Moon is now. His narrative captures the vast primitive awesomeness of the polar regions, something largely unknown to those who live outside the high latitudes. His struggle to survive is in part an effort of will to define himself against this awful grandeur; it is this element of the story that endures and fascinates today.
Kieran Mulvaney's afterword provides necessary context for Byrd's narrative and should not be overlooked, although it includes what may well be an unjustified slur on the achievements of Robert Peary. This book is highly recommended to the reader who desires to know something of a world foreign to the relatively comfortable existance most Americans experience today.
24 of 25 found the following review helpful:
Can fundamentally alter one's perception of nature and life. Dec 02, 1998
By Matt Taylor
This book has the capacity to fundamentally alter the way one perceives nature and life. However, the most striking aspect of the book was Byrd's view of religion. While religious discussion does not consume a large portion of the text, Byrd's insights into the matter are unique and very interesting, especially to to the freethinking agnostic. Without catering to a particular denomination, his take on religion is a self-reliant, logical, hearty one that somehow manages to be spiritual and graceful at the same time. This is due, in large part, to the fact that so much of this view is based on his admiration and astonishment at the complexities of nature. A truly inspiring piece of work, it can crack chinks into the souls of even hardened skeptics and remind us all that life is a panorama of personal emotional relationships with others that make our own continued survival worthwhile.
22 of 23 found the following review helpful:
 Cold is Relative Jan 21, 2006
By ITS
"Cold does queer things. At 50° below zero a flashlight dies out in your hand. At -55° kerosene will freeze. At -60° rubber turns brittle." These are some of Byrd's observations from his surreal solo expedition to the heart of Antarctica's night.
The expedition took place from March - August of 1934. Byrd, a former Navy officer, rugged explorer, decides to push the envelope doing something no man had ever tried before. He was to monitor the weather while living in a shack buried in snow, by himself, for the entire night-time period that covered almost 6 months.
Although the literary value regarding this book could be argued, it is nevertheless a great story based on a unique social experiment. Byrd's trail of thoughts veers from rational, to ridiculous. His mood is altered by the extreme struggles that he has to endure to serve science. However, one can pick up the vibe that he wanted to do this for himself as much as for science. He was thrilled at first, but underestimated what he was really in for.
Byrd gets crushed while he is only halfway through. The cold and physical problems put him down. He struggles between life and death for what seems to be an eternity. And it all takes place in the absolute darkness of the polar night. Byrd goes on and on about how much he learns to appreciate the simple things of modern life, while he has lost possession of them. He makes incoherent philosophical theoriest, and struggles with faith.
Finally Byrd finds the strength to go on. I wouldn't be giving up the end of the book in here by the fact that he wrote it four years after the completion of this expedition. This book would be a perfect read in the middle of the winter. The colder the better! Get a warm cup of chocolate and relive the polar experience. You will find a new appreciation for that thermostat knob while reading it.
11 of 12 found the following review helpful:
Courageous Feb 01, 2005
By Daniel H. Bigelow
The stories of people who went through terrible situations can become hagiography. The worse torture one went through and survived, the tougher one is, right?
I expected Admiral Richard Byrd's story of his struggle with illness and the elements in a weather outpost in Antarctica, over a hundred miles from the nearest other multicellular organism, to follow this pattern. Byrd could be forgiven for slapping himself on the back for having lived through such travails, not only because it really would take a remarkable man, but also because he had to carefully tend to his reputation, which was essential to securing funding for his exploratory expeditions. But Alone, written only four years after the events described and while Byrd's future career was still an issue, is a more remarkable document than I expected.
Besides describing the remarkable routine of his outpost and how one could live there, where temperatures routinely dipped under negative forty degrees Fahrenheit, and besides describing the agony Byrd suffered from an insidious carbon monoxide leak in the very stove that he depended on to stay warm enough to survive, Byrd also writes what puts his reputation at risk. He describes with a surprising lack of defensiveness his mental breakdown. Over sixty awful days, Byrd changed from the intrepid explorer who wanted to spend nine months alone in the Antarctic winter just for the experience to an emaciated, pain-wracked man who could not bear to stick to his original resolution to forbid a dangerous rescue attempt.
Like I said, merely telling how he endured pain could only make Byrd look more manly. Tough guys endure pain. But by telling the extent to which the pain unmanned him (in his own turn-of-the-century Virginian mind), Byrd gives a memoir that is as remarkable for its honesty as it is for the fascinating environment in which his adventure takes place. Letting this book be published during his lifetime is perhaps as great an act of courage as that which he showed during the events of this extraordinary and fascinating book.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Alone Sep 21, 2000
By Tom Lowe
"Owl Looking Back"
Richard E. Byrd's "ALONE" gets off to a slow start, but as soon as Byrd is left alone, 123 miles from the nearest humans at Little America, during the Antarctic winter, the real drama begins. In 1934, long before science ascertained the real effects of constant darkness on the human psyche, Byrd, in this autobiographical expose, makes it very clear how the lack of sunlight, isolation, and carbon monoxide poisoning can push a man to his utmost mental and physical limits. To top it off, Byrd has a writing style so descriptive and soulful that it makes the reader feel as if he were right there with him as an invisible observer. Anyone who likes to explore the dormant, but always present, dark recesses of the human mind has to read this book. As a result, Byrd unintentionally takes us also on an exploration of the mind, not just the brutal conditions of the Antarctic. Great book.
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