Other editions of book The Shameless Diary of an Explorer: A Story of Failure on Mt. McKinley

Robert Steed Dunn's classic tale of his early attempt to summit Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska is far from the run-of-the-mill heroic mountaineering book. Through all of his years of exploration and work as a war correspondent, his writing was typified by raw honesty and a keen eye toward the foibles and follies of man.Make no mistake, this account is thrilling. But it's also at times hilarious. The 1903 expedition was small and throughout, Dunn exposes the reality of living with and sharing danger with men who become all too familiar. It reads like a modern Krakauer book.Dunn had already been on one very dangerous expedition in 1898. He would go on to explore the Kamchatka River, cover the front lines in World War I for the New York Post, serve as an intelligence officer, and ride with General John "Black Jack" Pershing into Mexico after Pancho Villa.Review"A classic on exploration. Dunn...alone of them all was an artist for art’s sake"--Lincoln Steffens"[Dunn was] a man bent on adventure and ready to face the dangers and hardships that adventure brings."--The New York Times Book ReviewAmazon.com ReviewMore adventure books should be like this. In a genre rife with overbearing machismo and braggadocio, this book, originally published in 1907, is a refreshing and at times hilarious take on exploration. Robert Dunn reveals the bickering and frayed nerves, petty insecurities and trivial jealousies that existed alongside the courage, discipline, and determination exhibited by each member of the 1903 expedition that attempted the first ascent of Alaska's Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. Without downplaying the difficulty of the task, Dunn's honest assessments of the men involved reveals the complex motivations for undertaking arduous exploration and the human weaknesses that are revealed in the process.--Shawn Carkonen

Harvard graduate Robert Dunn (1877-1955) was an author, adventurer, explorer, and newspaper writer-like his pal Jack London. Thanks to editor Lincoln Steffens, 26-year-old Dunn was able to obtain a position as geologist on arctic explorer Frederick Cook's climbing expedition to Mount McKinley (whose summit had not been reached at that time).In 1907 Dunn wrote of his experiences on the McKinley expedition in his book "The Shameless Diary of an Explorer." In the words of the author "this is the story of a failure. I think that success would have made it no more worth telling. It is about an exploring party, the sort that so often fails." In this book Dunn writes of "how the outer waste and the ego of each companion uplifted or scarred his own . . . and I hope that in reporting any inherent vanity in my fellows, I have hit off hardest my own insufferable egotism." Professor Cook and "Simon" come in for a good deal of criticism and disparagement. Yet no one who has once begun the book is likely to lay it aside before he has reached the last page. The author knows how to paint a vivid picture with a few strokes. You will never read more realistic descriptions of the Alaskan tundra, or of difficulties encountered with pack animals in fording rivers and crossing glaciers. At these points the author's ability rises to the level of genius. There are not a few disfiguring crudities of language and taste, and some things that had better been left unwritten. But when all is said the book is one that will have to be reckoned with by future explorers of the Alaskan wilds. In reading books of adventure and exploration, one might often wonder about the unmentioned details. What the men thought of it all, if their shoes hurt them, if they were or were not congenial to each other, whether they got mad or indeed acted like ordinary human beings under more usual conditions. Robert Dunn in this diary gives us all these minute and very interesting details. In the opening of the book he speaks of Mount McKinley as the objective point, but adds that a dozen other lands could have served the purport of this diary quite as well. He is right, and has discovered something more famous explorers have overlooked, that a touch of human interest in the account of your vacation in the woods. If a man were to get no vacation at all, it would be positive cruelty to put this volume in his way. Unlike most guide books, it is written in narrative form, most interesting to read. If you have been in the woods the descriptions call you to return with compelling force. If you never have been, then you begin to wonder why you have wasted your opportunities so long. There is nothing pedantic or patronizing about the advice. One might almost imagine it was an old Maine guide talking, while he sat on a log and puffed an inverted corncob pipe. The author is emphatic in his opinions, and we believe those that follow his advice will not come to grief.ContentsI. THE MASTER MOTIVEII. GEOGRAPHICALIII. THE OUTFIT, HUMAN AND MATERIALIV. THE CAYUSE GAMEV. THE FORBIDDEN TUNDRAVI. THE VANISHING FORDVII. LAST STRAWSVIII. DISASTER AND THE STOIC PROFESSORIX. I BREAK LOOSE TWICEX. PLEURISY AND THE PASSXI. RED FLESH FOR KINGS OF FRANCEXII. UNDER THE SMILING SNOWXIII. BUTTING BLINDLY INTO STORMXIV. REMORSE AND SALTXV. KICKS, DISCOVERIES, AND A DREAMXVI. WHAT IS COURAGE?XVII. PUTTING YOUR HOUSE IN ORDERXVIII. RAVENS AND DOOMED HORSESXIX. WILLOW BUSHES TO AQUATICSXX. SWIFT WATER INTO GREAT GLACIERSXXI. HUMANITY AND HAPPINESS

Robert Steed Dunn's classic tale of his early attempt to summit Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska is far from the run-of-the-mill heroic mountaineering book. Through all of his years of exploration and work as a war correspondent, his writing was typified by raw honesty and a keen eye toward the foibles and follies of man. Make no mistake, this account is thrilling. But it's also at times hilarious. The 1903 expedition was small and throughout, Dunn exposes the reality of living with and sharing danger with men who become all too familiar. It reads like a modern Krakauer book. Dunn had already been on one very dangerous expedition in 1898. He would go on to explore the Kamchatka River, cover the front lines in World War I for the New York Post, serve as an intelligence officer, and ride with General John "Black Jack" Pershing into Mexico after Pancho Villa. Review "A classic on exploration. Dunn...alone of them all was an artist for art’s sake" --Lincoln Steffens "[Dunn was] a man bent on adventure and ready to face the dangers and hardships that adventure brings." --The New York Times Book Review Amazon.com Review More adventure books should be like this. In a genre rife with overbearing machismo and braggadocio, this book, originally published in 1907, is a refreshing and at times hilarious take on exploration. Robert Dunn reveals the bickering and frayed nerves, petty insecurities and trivial jealousies that existed alongside the courage, discipline, and determination exhibited by each member of the 1903 expedition that attempted the first ascent of Alaska's Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. Without downplaying the difficulty of the task, Dunn's honest assessments of the men involved reveals the complex motivations for undertaking arduous exploration and the human weaknesses that are revealed in the process.--Shawn Carkonen

In 1903, aspiring journalist Robert Dunn joined an expedition attempting the first ascent of Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. Led by explorer Frederick Cook (who would later win infamy for faking the discovery of the North Pole), the climbers failed to conquer McKinley, but they did circumnavigate the great peak—an accomplishment not repeated until 1978. The trek also spawned a book unique in the literature of exploration: Dunn’s frank, sardonic, no-holds-barred look at day-to-day existence on an Alaskan expedition. Before Dunn, most such accounts were sanitized and expurgated of anything unflattering. Dunn, however, a protégé of the muckraker Lincoln Steffens, endeavored to report what he saw, with panache. And what Dunn reported was a journey rife with conflict, missed opportunity, incompetence, privation, and danger. By showing men reduced to their rawest state, the young journalist produced a compelling, insightful, and oddly amusing book that disturbed and riveted his contemporaries. As Hudson Stuck—the Episcopal archdeacon of the Yukon who completed the first ascent of Mt. McKinley in 1913—observed, “[Dunn’s] book has a curious undeniable power, despite its brutal frankness. . . . One is thankful, however, that it is unique in the literature of travel.”

Excerpt from The Shameless Diary of an Explorer: With Illustration From Photographs by the AuthorThis is the story of a failure. I think that success would have made it no more worth telling. It is about an exploring party, the sort that so often fails.Fountains of youth, or eldorados, or wider realms for cross and conscience - these seemed to lure a younger world to unknown regions. To-day men explore for the iron crown of science; they say that they do, at least.But I believe that neither biology to-day, nor gold nor the creeds of old, have ever been the explorer's master motive. His real ardor is more profound. It has revealed and civilized our sphere. It stirs the thirst to discover and subdue which vests the very fiber of our race; makes us ache for tumult and change, for strife for its own sake against big odds.The true spirit of the explorer is a primordial rest lessness. It is spurred by instincts of pre-natal be ing and a cloudy hereafter, to search the glamour of unknown peaks and seas and forests for assur ance of man's imperfect faith in immortality. It is a creative instinct.The explorer seldom speaks of it openly; he is not unwilling, but he cannot. He is inarticulate, like the victim of a passion. Few but he can understand his inspiration. The world asks of him purposes more obvious. He cites a widespread fervor; of old, perhaps religion; to-day, he will name science. And these are or have been his impulses, in part; and the world can grasp them. Science is the natural heir to the cross as the public avatar of exploration. Each is sponsor for the Unknowable; one was, one is now, the Aladdin lamp of the Improbable.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.