A well-researched and detailed account of the ambitious Canadian Arctic Expedition. Nivens draws on diaries, journals and letters to reconstruct, month by month, the fate of the expedition, which included scientific leader Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Captain Bob Bartlett (who published his own account), James Murray and Alistair Forbed Mackay (both of whom also served with Shackleton) and William McKinlay, who devoted his long life to setting the record straight on the tragic events of 1913-1914. The charismatic, scene-stealing Stefannson (who blamed Bartlett and leaves the ship as soon as it is trapped in the ice) gets a good drubbing by Niven.