Excited to give his report on explorer Ernest Shackleton in school, and frustrated by a monstrous snowstorm that has left his family and city snowbound, a boy imagines himself on a voyage where he and his crew (his family) are trapped by the ice, just like his favorite explorer and the ship, Endurance.

Tells the story of the shipwreck of the Endurance in a sea of ice en route to Antarctica, and the survival of all 28 members of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Presents a portrait of five extraordinary figures--Ernest Shackleton, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rachel Carson--to illuminate how great leaders are made in times of adversity and the diverse skills they summon in order to prevail.

"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, an entwined narrative of the most adventurous year of all time, when three expeditions simultaneously raced to the top, bottom, and heights of the world. As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration--set at the world's frozen extremes--lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called Third Pole, the "pole of altitude," located in unexplored heights of the Himalayas. Before the calendar turned,...