GREAT EXPLORATION HOAXES

Jon Krakauer selected this 1982 account of “breathtaking acts of deceit” by early explorers for his Modern Library Exploration series, partly because it goes far in explaining why its subjects (few of them cowards) would try so hard to convince others (or themselves) of their phony accomplishments. Well-known travel-writer Jan Morris, in her short introduction, notes the incredible pathos to Roberts’s sympathetic tales of ten men who staged elaborate hoaxes in pursuit of fame and glory. The best known among them (Sebastian Cabot, Admiral Byrd, and Robert Peary) all faked exploratory achievement to satisfy both childhood frustrations and adult hunger. Kirkus (Sept. 1, 1982, p. 1051) found little new information here, but we thought that Roberts (author of more than a dozen works on exploration and mountaineering) rendered these tales “more accessible,” livelier, and more “sensitive” than previous accounts. The bottom line: “good fun for exploration buffs, and entertaining enough to appeal to a wider, offbeat audience.”