Very detailed account of the journey. It is a long read so if your club is into epic novels, this is a great choice, if not - skip it or you\\\'ll find most people won\\\'t read the entire thing.

Here are some discussion questions we used:

1. Would you be interested in taking this journey?
2. Would you have followed orders to return to camp and not continue to the South Pole?
3. The book was completed only 9 years after the journey, however it was clear that new technology, such as caterpillar-tread vehicles & airplanes, would revolutionize future exploration, thus making the suffering endured by Scott & him men unnecessary. What are your thoughts?
4. The book asks, but does not answer, the question of whether this suffering was futile or whether it would inspire future humans facing very different challenges. What are your thoughts?
5. The Winter Journey became a case study on how a paradigm shift in scientific methodology can devalue data that had begun to be collected before the shift. In this case, many biologists believed in “recapitulation theory” (a largely discredited biological hypothesis that developing from embryo to adult, animals go through stages resembling the evolution of their remote ancestors) and the scientists on the journey were collecting specimens based upon this theory. However, when the survivors returned to England years later, embryologists were largely uninterested in the egg collection. Thoughts?
6. The men in the book have been described as an “immensely admirable kind of inspiration”. Do you agree or were they just out looking for adventure?
7. The book is #1 on National Geographic’s 100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time above the Lewis & Clark Journals and Powell’s Exploration of the Colorado River. Others that made the list include Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire; Krakauer’s Into Thin Air; Marco Polo’s Travels published in 1298; Mark Twain’s Roughing It; Shackleton’s South; Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa and Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis. Does it deserve the top spot?