This should have been a boring book — thirteen men stuck in a ship in the ice for three years. But it wasn't. Something about the fact that they even agreed to make this trip amazed me. And Nansen and Johansen's trip across the ice was riveting. Johansen was attacked and knocked down by a polar bear and escaped unhurt. Nansen's kayak was attacked by a walrus and he just managed to get to a chunk of ice before it sank. On another occasion, the kayaks drifted away from the ice floe they were on and Nansen had to swim for them, making it just seconds before the cold got to him. Nansen is a good writer, Sverdrup, who wrote the account of the ship after Nansen left, not as good but not awful.