Endurance
by Alfred Lansing
Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic expedition: the ship crushed in ice, twenty-eight men on floes and then in lifeboats, the eight-hundred-mile open-boat voyage to South Georgia and the crossing of its mountains, and not one man lost. Lansing wrote it in 1959 from diaries and interviews, and it reads like a thriller. Leadership schools teach it for good reason.
Read it if…
you lead people through uncertainty and want the best case study ever written.
Skip it if…
you want explicit lessons; Lansing tells the story and trusts you.
Three things you will actually use
- Optimism is a leadership duty, not a mood.
- Keep the difficult men close.
- Routine and small comforts hold a group together.
Do this first
Note how Shackleton handled morale, the pessimists and the routine; apply one to your team.
Our verdict
Gripping and instructive.
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