From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the
Flower Moon and The Wager, a thrilling and powerful true story of
adventure and obsession in the Antarctic, lavishly illustrated with
color photographs.
"[Grann is] one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers
working today."--New York Magazine
Henry Worsley was a devoted husband and father and a decorated British
special forces officer who believed in honor and sacrifice. He was also
a man obsessed. He spent his life idolizing Ernest Shackleton, the
nineteenth-century polar explorer, who tried to become the first person
to reach the South Pole, and later sought to cross Antarctica on foot.
Shackleton never completed his journeys, but he repeatedly rescued his
men from certain death, and emerged as one of the greatest leaders in
history.
Worsley felt an overpowering connection to those expeditions. He was
related to one of Shackleton's men, Frank Worsley, and spent a fortune
collecting artifacts from their epic treks across the continent. He
modeled his military command on Shackleton's legendary skills and was
determined to measure his own powers of endurance against them. He would
succeed where Shackleton had failed, in the most brutal landscape in the
world.
In 2008, Worsley set out across Antarctica with two other descendants of
Shackleton's crew, battling the freezing, desolate landscape,
life-threatening physical exhaustion, and hidden crevasses. Yet when he
returned home he felt compelled to go back. On November 13, 2015, at age
55, Worsley bid farewell to his family and embarked on his most perilous
quest: to walk across Antarctica alone. David Grann tells Worsley's
remarkable story with the intensity and power that have led him to be
called "simply the best narrative nonfiction writer working today."
Illustrated with more than fifty stunning photographs from Worsley's and
Shackleton's journeys, The White Darkness is both a gorgeous keepsake
volume and a spellbinding story of courage, love, and a man pushing
himself to the extremes of human capacity.
Look for David Grann's latest #1 New York Times bestselling
book, The Wager!
