Publishers Weekly
01/31/2019
In this middling history, author and documentarist Maynard (The Unseen Anzac) tells the story of Lincoln Ellsworth, a “wealthy and eccentric” American who, despite disliking cold weather and physical labor, aspired to fly across Antarctica in 1935. Maynard teases out the skeletons in Ellsworth’s closet—his insecurities, his unhappy childhood, his obsession with Wyatt Earp, his homosexuality—while layering obstacle upon obstacle, including the fact that Ellsworth did not know how to navigate or ski when he set out on his first polar adventure in 1925 with seasoned explorer Roald Amundsen. Readers seeking heart-racing snowbound adventure will twiddle their thumbs as Ellsworth writes check after check to finance his caprice. Maynard details the international scandals and ego clashes in the making of this most unlikely quest. More interesting are Ellsworth’s attempts to outmaneuver Admiral Richard Byrd, who was threading the icebergs and pressing further south than Captain James Cook had in 1774. Accounts of the activities of Russian icebreakers and the O-12, the first Arctic submarine and a counterpart to Jules Verne’s Nautilus, make for good reading. The heart of this story, however, is not Ellsworth but the then-uncharted Antarctic continent, depicted lyrically as unnamed mountain peaks, jumbled compass readings, and “undulating white silence stretched to the horizon in every direction.” Only readers particularly interested in that region will stick it out for the duration of this journey. (Feb.)
Clive Cussler [Praise for Jeff Maynard]
"Maynard presents the various controversies, along with in-depth documentation. A must read."
Midwest Book Review
"A simply fascinating and inherently riveting read from beginning to end. Exceptionally well researched, written, organized, and presented by Maynard (who is a member of the Explorers Club and a former President of the Historical Diving Society)."
Flight Journal
"If you were to put all the characters, drama, and seemingly outlandish adventures contained in Antarctica’s Lost Aviator into a movie script, it would be rejected as too unbelievable. But Lincoln Ellsworth was read and did live the life contained in this biography."
Sydney Morning Herald [Praise for Jeff Maynard]
This polar adventure classic is begging to be read. A ripping yarn.
The Age [Praise for Jeff Maynard]
A wonderfully researched book. Almost every page leaves you astonished.
Kirkus Reviews
2018-10-28
The biography of a man who "competed for the last great prize in polar exploration."
Readers who grew up devouring the Tom Swift adventure novels, with their flying boats and subocean geotrons, will find much to like in Maynard's (The Unseen Anzac: How an Enigmatic Explorer Created Australia's World War I Photographs, 2015, etc.) engrossing biography of Lincoln Ellsworth (1880-1951). He was something of a "mystery" to the author until he came upon a cache of Ellsworth's papers, which "opened an intimate window into one of the strangest episodes in polar history." The son of a domineering, ultrawealthy coal baron, Ellsworth was an insecure man in search of a purpose. A college dropout, he had the money to do whatever he wanted, so he became a professional adventurer. He prospected for gold and participated in a buffalo hunt (which he wrote a book about) and a geological survey in Peru. His life changed in 1924 when he met Roald Amundsen, the "world's greatest polar explorer." Ellsworth's father provided the financing for the two of them to explore the Arctic by air, but the expedition failed. After Ellsworth's father died, he inherited millions. He financed Amundsen's semirigid airship expedition to be the first to reach the North Pole by air. But Richard Byrd did it first, although, as Maynard notes, he actually came up short. Ellsworth then financed explorer Hubert Wilkins' expedition to travel in a submarine to the North Pole. It failed. After a series of harrowing, unsuccessful Arctic expeditions by air, finally, in 1935, using a reconditioned herring boat which Ellsworth named after one of his heroes, Wyatt Earp, and a specially modified airplane he named Polar Star, Ellsworth and his pilot were the first to cross Antarctica. "By guess or by God," Maynard writes, it "remains an incredible achievement."
Filled with a sumptuous cast of real-life adventurers, this is an engrossing and stirring tale.
