For almost a century, Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton's expeditions in the Antarctic have captured the hearts and imaginations of armchair explorers, scientists, historians, and most recently, even stockbrokers and CEOs, who laud Shackleton's skills as a visionary and an exemplary leader. Books, movies, television specials, and reprints of expedition members' diaries and letters have recounted the details of Shackleton's extraordinary 1914–1917 Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition—the expedition that brought to a close the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. South however, is the story in Ernest Shackleton's own words.