Mountaineering History

Once we thought monsters lived there. In the Enlightenment we scaled them to commune with the sublime. Soon, we were racing to conquer their summits in the name of national pride. In this ground-breaking, classic work, Robert Macfarlane takes us up into the mountains: to experience their shattering beauty, the fear and risk of adventure, and to explore the strange impulses that have for centuries lead us to the world's highest places.

Entertaining, thought provoking, and moving, these four essays by spiritual author and teacher Eknath Easwaran offer an hour of inspiration for listeners of any faith, philosophy, or lifestyle. Through anecdotes, stories of the saints, surprising analogies, and wise insights, Easwaran encourages us to explore what spiritual living can mean today.

Shivya Nath quit her corporate job at age twenty-three to travel the world. She gave up her home and the need for a permanent address, sold most of her possessions and embarked on a nomadic journey that has taken her everywhere from remote Himalayan villages to the Amazon rainforests of Ecuador...

Walking defines us as human beings. But how much do we know about the paths that we walk? Why do they matter? What caused so many to be lost? And can we create more of them? In The Path More Travelled, acclaimed geographer and travel writer Nicholas Crane explores the hidden history of Britain's...

Ever suffered the collective flatulence of eighty co-passengers while sailing on a serene Asian river? Or called out for rescue in true Bollywood style while locked up in a minaret in Persia? Or had to cross a pack of hyenas en route to the loo?...

Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada is an engrossing blend of scientific exploration and personal adventure. Clarence King describes the ascent of Mounts Tyndall, Shasta, and Whitney with a scientific poet’s eye, and makes the grandeur of the cliffs, the peaks, the glaciers, and the meadows of Yosemite Valley come alive through his remarkable gifts of portrayal. King describes nature like a master painter while his portrait of the people of California 20 years after the Gold Rush finds engaging expression in a subtle shift of style.

For all but the final day of six electric weeks during the winter of 2023, India’s campaign at a home World Cup blazed and sparkled, warming the soul of a cricket-crazed nation. As Rohit Sharma’s dominant side took their show on the road, from one delirious city to another hysterical town...

A dazzling plunge into the four strangest landscapes scattered across Europe. In Outlandish, acclaimed travel writer Nick Hunt takes us across landscapes that should not be there, wildernesses found in Europe yet seemingly belonging to far-off continents: a patch of Arctic tundra in Scotland...

The height of Mt. Everest was first measured in 1850, but the closest any westerner got to Everest during the next 71 years, until 1921, was 40 miles. The Hunt for Mt. Everest tells the story of the 71-year quest to find the world's highest mountain. It's a tale of high drama, of...

The first full-length biography of George Ingle Finch - maverick Australian mountaineer, scientist, concert pianist and father of actor Peter Finch. George Ingle Finch, mountaineer, soldier, scientist, rebellious spirit, boy from the bush, was in his day one of the most famous men in the world. In 1922 he stood at the highest point on Everest, a feat not bettered for 30 years. He invented the predecessor to the puffer jacket and pioneered the use of oxygen in climbing.

An Epic Memoir of an Intrepid Solo Adventurer, a Woman Who Lived by the Philosophy "Go Simple, Go Solo, Go Now" In a memoir remarkable for its quiet confidence and acute natural observation, the author of Paddling Hawaii and Paddling My Own Canoe begins with her decision, at age 60, to undertake...

A portrait of a man who became a legend, even though he didn't even want it. Tomek Mackiewicz changed the impossible into reality. Eight years ago, he set himself a goal to be the first person to climb Nanga Parbat, Naked Mountain in the winter. Famous Himalayan mountaineers entered the race, but “Czapkins” didn't want to compete. He wanted to climb the mountain on his own terms...

A deeply moving story of the beauty and brutality of life, and death, on the world's most unpredictable and perilous mountain. Sitting just lower than Everest at 8,611 meters above sea level on the China-Pakistan border, the Savage Mountain claims the lives of even the most experienced climbers. Alongside severe altitude, the weather is notoriously volatile and the climb relentlessly steep. A staggering one in four attempts result in death on the mountain.

During the Ice Age, early humans saw themselves constantly reflected in these planes of ice - and became more reflective themselves, beginning to create works of art, innovate through technology and develop language. In A Cold Spell: A Human History of Ice, Max Leonard takes us from the beginning of our story to the modern day, tracing the ways ice has influenced our development, our economies, our social customs and our lives - and what it means for us that it is rapidly disappearing from our planet.

14 luglio 1961, A Courmayeur scatta l'allarme. Sul Pilone Centrale del Frêney, la parete rocciosa più alta del Monte Bianco, sette scalatori guidati da Walter Bonatti e Pierre Mazeaud si trovano intrappolati nella bufera. Neve, temporali a catena, temperature polari, una perturbazione che sembra non finire più. Per giorni le squadre di soccorso tentano di raggiungere i dispersi mentre la radio e la televisione rivelano un dramma in crescendo che si consuma dal vivo, ma che rimane lontano, invisibile dentro le nubi.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Spellbinding adventure from Canada's most beloved modern-day explorer. Traverspine is not a place you will find on most maps. A century ago, it stood near the foothills of the remote Mealy Mountains in central Labrador. Today it is an abandoned ghost town, almost all trace of...