Good books about unfortunate things

Back in the gay and merry 90s when all was well with the world, people wrote a lot of books about people doing dangerous things that often lead to their deaths. I suppose at that time we needed more excitement in our lives. Publishers churned out books like Endurance, Into Thin Air, The Perfect Storm and A Voyage For Madmen.

Fergus Fleming continues to write in this dwindling genre with books about underprepared Frenchmen crossing the Sahara, underprepared and soon dead British explorers, and the race to get to the North Pole. I just found a copy of his Killing Dragons which concerns the initial attempts to conquer the Alps. His approach to the subjects is highly irreverent and leaves you wondering how these people thought they could accomplish their goals. That doesn't mean he can't tell a good story. In Barrow's Boys, he relates the tale of the HMS Terror and Erebus, which were specially built to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. Loaded with tons of supplies and a full crew, they were sent west and disappeared somewhere north of Canada. The books are packed with strange little stories such as these and Fleming's ability to balance the (black) humor and the excitement makes for great reading.