A guide to leadership draws on Ernest Shackelton's management style during his exploration of Antarctica, providing advice on how leaders can instill optimism, set personal examples, and perservere in the face of adversity.

Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history. Yet Columbus made three more voyages within the span of only a decade, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks and convert those he found there to Christianity. These later voyages were even more adventurous, violent, and ambiguous,...