I'm not a researcher in the area of the historical facts behind the ill-fated Scott expedition (though Lawrence Oates was a distant relative). But read this book as an account of the severe conditions Scott, Amundson, Bird, and other turn of the century explorers willingly endured in the name of exploration and glory.Contrast their experiences with modern explorations which seem to be all government sponsored. If an astronout gets so much as a hang nail, the program stops to insure that injury or death is essentially impossible (though the Challenger accident shows us to be a bit more humble: we simply don't know everything). Exporation and adventure is supposed to be dangerous since we are going into the unknown, and we do it purposefully. A bit of the now seemingly forgotten sense of adventure would be welcome for modern explorers.