“Leading at The Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition” is a good book for learning about leadership principles. It relies as backdrop the story of Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 British Imperial Trans-Antarctica Expedition, in the legendary Endurance, in which he tried to be the first to traverse the continent. This exact leadership study has been done before, notably Morrell’s 2001 “Shackleton’s Way.” Both books are good, but I found this one better organized. The book first presents the incredible true story, one of the most famous survival stories ever, and highlights 10 leadership principles, using the story to illustrate the principles. In addition, author Perkins includes, like Morrell, leadership examples from modern-day situations, mostly from business and the military, but a few from other survival stories, like “Alive,” “Adrift” and “Touching the Void.”

A few critiques: it’s a fascinating study, but if you’ve read Morrell, nothing here will be new. And if you are an avid leadership student, nothing should be new. Unfortunately, the book is drawn out, and gets repetitive. For example, the chapter on stamina, frequently repeats the same point, even directly saying this chapter is about the critical importance of taking care of yourself... when he just said the same thought five different ways. Perkins states the obvious, many times. An example: about 1996 Everest... “Fischer was strong, but he was not invincible. Although he concealed his inner turmoil, the strain and worry of the ascent, coupled with physical exhaustion, took its toll.” Perkins had just written that Fischer died, so... yes. It took its toll. We get it.

The Levi Strauss story was more confusing than enlightening; why did it fail exactly? It was an example of the principle of denying reality, but not well explained. I grew a bit tired of reading about “The Edge,” which is a concept from a previous book. But here it sounded like a lot of marketing for maybe a future seminar or podcast?

The book is part story, part lecture and part home workshop. There are questions at the end of each chapter to get you thinking. But some of the concepts are a bit silly, with a bit of lack of creativity. The Risk Assessment Matrix... I was expecting this interesting matrix and scale perhaps, but what I saw was just a laundry list for people to fill out with “Do it!” “Don’t Do It!” That would be better left out of the book.

And the “Moose on the Table” is nothing more than the “Elephant in the Room,” which is not original.

Some of the leadership comparisons don’t work. In the teamwork section, Perkins makes a comparison to Everest 1996, from Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Air,” but... these were entirely different scenarios. Each person who signed up for Everest met for the first time on that trip; they were clients, and in it for themselves to begin with. They were not a team, nothing like Shackleton’s crew. Perkins stated how climbers came upon others and moved on without offering food, water, oxygen... clearly Perkins has never been on Everest! They don’t even remove dead bodies up there. There’s no way to really save anyone up there. That’s not lack of teamwork, it’s pure survival. And clients go in knowing this can happen.

Some of the things I really liked about this book was that it was easy to read, with many other great examples. A great point for modern times is how our virtual reality makes it hard to communicate, and foster teamwork. The Hanoi Hilton tappers showed how we can communicate, under the harshest of situations. It’s an even more crucial point during the pandemic.

Unlike Morrell, Perkins does not glorify Shackleton, but presents him in a more realistic light. He was a great but sometimes flawed leader, and that’s okay. The chapter on civility shocked me as I think about today and how simple courtesy is dying, and rudeness is being confused with standing up for “my rights.”

I loved his stories of Vietnam, as he served there (thank you, Mr. Perkins) and his personal leadership experiences. There’s a superb epilogue about the race to the Pole, and an excellent bibliography, which he references well.

So it’s a great book for a classroom, for the beginning leaders, as a refresher (which I used it as), with many good points. It’s well organized, but could use another good editing round.

Brand	N/A
Rating	4.6 (255 ratings)
Price	$12.92
Category	Arctic & Antarctica