Title search results
Showing 1341 - 1360 of 1373 items
Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas
By Abby Sunderland, Lynn Vincent. 2011
Abby Sutherland grew up sailing. Her father, Laurence, a shipwright, and her mother, Marianne, wanted their kids to develop responsibility,…
to see other cultures, to experience the world instead of watching it on TV. So they took them sailing down the coast of Mexico... for three years. When Abby was thirteen, she began helping her father deliver boats and soon was sailing solo. She loved being on the open ocean, the spray in her face, the wind in her hair. She began to dream of sailing the world. But fewer people have successfully solo-circumnavigated the globe than have traveled into space. It is a challenge so immense that many have died trying, and all have been pushed beyond every physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual limit. In Unsinkable, you will follow Abby into the depths through a gripping and evocative firsthand account that starts prior to her departure, travels through her daring (and sometimes near-death) encounters on the open sea, to her dramatic rescue in the remotest part of the Indian Ocean. Today, when the most productive thing a teenager may do is play videogames, Abby's courage and tenacity shows us all what can happen when we choose to challenge our own limits, embrace faith, and aim for what our critics say is impossible. It was pitch-black out and whitewater was crashing over the boat. The wintry wind screamed across the deck, and I could tell it was now holding up near fifty knots. Imagine standing on the roof of a car that's driving down the freeway. That's how hard it was blowing.At that moment, a huge gust hit the mainsail like a train. The boat heeled over to port as if a giant hand had smacked her down, and I tumbled over the top of the mainsail toward the water... On January 23, 2010, sixteen-year-old Abby Sunderland set sail from Marina del Rey, California, in an attempt to become the youngest person to sail solo, nonstop, and unassisted around the world. Immediately, her trip sparked controversy. What was a girl her age doing undertaking such a voyage? What were her parents thinking? Abby's critics predicted she'd make it a few weeks at most. But sailing south, she proved them wrong and became the youngest person to solo around Cape Horn, the "Mt. Everest of sailing." Crossing the Southern and Atlantic oceans, she battled vicious storms and equipment breakdowns?making one critical repair literally with a nail file and some line. Abby bested the wicked waters at the southern tip of Africa and then entered the Indian Ocean?all twenty-seven million square miles of it. Even less than a hundred years ago, having your boat become disabled in the middle of the Indian's immense rolling reaches was as good as a death sentence. The odds are better now, but not much. It was here that Abby Sutherland encountered the violent storms that would test her mettle and her will to survive?and change her life forever.Madoff's Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me
By Sheryl Weinstein. 2009
Nobody knew Bernie like I did, and nobody knows about me…Sheryl Weinstein met Bernie Madoff when she was just shy…
of forty, and went on to have a twenty-year secret, intimate relationship with the man now known as an evil mastermind, a villain of the greatest proportions. It was 1988 and Sheryl was facing a huge dilemma. Bernie Madoff was paying her a great deal of attention. She was in the midst of a rocky marriage and feeling vulnerable, when the powerful Wall Street mogul began making overtures. As a successful CPA and head of a major charitable organization, she had a lot to lose. She directed him to take things slowly. Over the next five years, there were business meetings over lunch, followed by intimate dinners in hotel rooms and finally, private moments that for a time seemed intensely satisfying to them both. "I'm not to be trusted," he once told her casually. She ignored it, having no idea how prophetic those words would be. After all, her relationship with Bernie was passionate and profound. She felt desirable. She was the one nobody knew about, with the window into the real man. So careful about investing her money, when the SEC cleared him in 1992 she decided to get in all the way--with her heart, her soul--and her financial future.Sheryl was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She couldn't possibly have imagined the devastation that would befall her. Learning the truth was shattering on so many levels. Many books are being written about the scale of Madoff's fraud, but until now, nothing has shown the man through private eyes. Sheryl Weinstein's riveting story reveals a Madoff who will shock and surprise you. From the boardroom to the bedroom, in each other, the two found something that had been lacking in their own lives. It's a story with tragic overtones--a drama that only now could find a devastating conclusion.Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds
By Natalie Zemon Davis. 2006
An engrossing study of Leo Africanus and his famous book, which introduced Africa to European readersAl-Hasan al-Wazzan--born in Granada to…
a Muslim family that in 1492 went to Morocco, where he traveled extensively on behalf of the sultan of Fez--is known to historians as Leo Africanus, author of the first geography of Africa to be published in Europe (in 1550). He had been captured by Christian pirates in the Mediterranean and imprisoned by the pope, then released, baptized, and allowed a European life of scholarship as the Christian writer Giovanni Leone. In this fascinating new book, the distinguished historian Natalie Zemon Davis offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial, and often contradictory traces that al-Hasan al-Wazzan left behind him, and a superb interpretation of his extraordinary life and work. In Trickster Travels, Davis describes all the sectors of her hero's life in rich detail, scrutinizing the evidence of al-Hasan's movement between cultural worlds; the Islamic and Arab traditions, genres, and ideas available to him; and his adventures with Christians and Jews in a European community of learned men and powerful church leaders. In depicting the life of this adventurous border-crosser, Davis suggests the many ways cultural barriers are negotiated and diverging traditions are fused.A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific
By Robert M. Utley. 1822
Early in the nineteenth century, the mountain men emerged as a small but distinctive group whose knowledge and experience of…
the trans-Mississippi West extended the national consciousness to continental dimensions. Though Lewis and Clark blazed a narrow corridor of geographical reality, the West remained largely terra incognita until trappers and traders--Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, Jedediah Smith--opened paths through the snow-choked mountain wilderness. They opened the way west to Fremont and played a major role in the pivotal years of 1845-1848 when Texas was annexed, the Oregon question was decided, and the Mexican War ended with the Southwest and California in American hands, the Pacific Ocean becoming our western boundary.Tales from the Edge: True Adventures in Alaska
By Larry Kaniut. 2013
From the Klondike to the Bering Sea, from Alaska's bounty that brought fortunes to some to its wilderness that claimed…
the lives of others, Tales from the Edge explores the myth, beauty, and peril of the arctic landscape. Editor Larry Kaniut brings together some of the world's best outdoor adventure writers to celebrate the land and the people who have measured themselves against it.Tales from the Edge is a celebration of Alaska featuring such notable contributors as Peter Jenkins, Spike Walker, Jay Hammond, Nick Jans, Dana Stabenow, Larry Kaniut, and more. Tales from the Edge will stir the soul and imagination of every armchair adventurer.The Millionaire and the Mummies: Theodore Davis’s Gilded Age in the Valley of the Kings
By John M. Adams. 2013
Egypt, The Valley of the Kings, 1905: An American robber baron peers through the hole he has cut in an…
ancient tomb wall and discovers the richest trove of golden treasure ever seen in Egypt. At the start of the twentieth century, Theodore Davis was the most famous archaeologist in the world; his career turned tomb-robbing and treasure-hunting into a science. Using six of Davis's most important discoveries—from the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut's sarcophagus to the exquisite shabti statuettes looted from the Egyptian Museum not too long ago—as a lens around which to focus his quintessentially American rags-to-riches tale, Adams chronicles the dizzying rise of a poor country preacher's son who, through corruption and fraud, amassed tremendous wealth in Gilded Age New York and then atoned for his ruthless career by inventing new standards for systematic excavation in the field of archaeology. Davis found a record eighteen tombs in the Valley and, breaking with custom, gave all the spoils of his discoveries to museums. A confederate of Boss Tweed, friend of Teddy Roosevelt, and rival of J. P. Morgan, the colorful "American Lord Carnarvon" shared his Newport mansion with his Rembrandts, his wife, and his mistress. The only reason Davis has been forgotten by history to a large extent is probably the fact that he stopped just short of King Tutankhamen's tomb, the discovery of which propelled Howard Carter (Davis's erstwhile employee) to worldwide fame just a few short years later. Drawing on rare and never-before-published archival material, The Millionaire and the Mummies, the first biography of Theodore Davis ever written rehabilitates a tarnished image through a thrilling tale of crime and adventure, filled with larger-than-life characters, unimaginable treasures, and exotic settings.Above the Clouds: The Diaries of a High-Altitude Mountaineer
By Anatoli Boukreev. 1996
A breathtaking and lavishly illustrated autobiography in essays on Anatoli Boukreev, the late world-famous mountaineer and author of The Climb.When…
Anatoli Boukreev died on the slopes of Annapurna on Christmas day, 1997, the world lost one of the greatest adventurers of our time.In Above the Clouds, both the man and his incredible climbs on Mt. McKinley, K2, Makalu, Manaslu, and Everest-including his diary entries on the infamous 1996 disaster, written shortly after his return-are immortalized. There also are minute technical details about the skill of mountain climbing, as well as personal reflections on what life means to someone who risks it every day. Fully illustrated with gorgeous color photos, Above the Clouds is a unique and breathtaking look at the world from its most remote peaks.Peter Zheutlin's thoroughly researched account will make you wish you'd been around to catch a glimpse of the extraordinary woman…
as she went wheeling by. --Bill Littlefield, National Public Radio's Only A GameUntil 1894 there were no female sport stars, no product endorsement deals, and no young mothers with the chutzpah to circle the globe on a bicycle. Annie Londonderry changed all of that. When Annie left Boston in June of that year, she was a brash young lady with a 42-pound bicycle, a revolver, a change of underwear, and a dream of freedom. She was also a feisty mother of three who had become the center of what one newspaper called "one of the most novel wagers ever made": a high-stakes bet between two wealthy merchants that a woman could not ride around the world on a bicycle. The epic journey that followed took the connection between athletics and commercialism to dizzying new heights, and turned Annie Londonderry into a symbol of women's equality. A vastly entertaining blend of social history, high adventure, and maverick marketing, Around the World on Two Wheels is an unforgettable portrait of courage, imagination, and tenacity. "Annie was a remarkable woman and well worth getting to know." --Booklist"A wonderful telling of one of the most intriguing, offbeat, and until now, lost chapters in the history of cycling." --David Herlihy, author of Bicycle: The History "A pleasant, affectionate portrait of a free spirit who pedaled her way out of Victorian constraints." --Kirkus Reviews"[A] charming and informative book." --Cape Cod Times"[An] incredible story. . .[a] fascinating book." --NextReads "[A] stirring tale. . .not only a must read, but a must have." --Western Writers of America Roundup Magazine"[A] remarkable saga." --The Winston-Salem (NC) Journal"[R]ead[s]. . .like a novel." --The Columbia (SC) State"[M]eticulously researched. . .illuminat[es] the feeling of a bygone era." --The Portsmouth (NH) Wire Peter Zheutlin has been chasing the story of his great-grandaunt Annie Londonderry for more than four years. He is an avid cyclist and a freelance journalist whose work appears regularly in the Boston Globe and the Christian Science Monitor. He has also written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, AARP Magazine, Bicycling, the New England Quarterly, and other publications. He lives in Needham, Massachusetts.Samba Perdido
By Richard Klein. 2018
Passado no colorido Rio de Janeiro, Samba Perdido é um livro instigante de memórias do Brasil. Situado nos anos 1960,…
1970 e 1980, o livro fornece um poderoso insight de um período em que o pais lutava para sair de uma ditadura e se descobria como uma sociedade livre e democrática. Em paralelo a esse drama, Samba Perdido narra o caminho do autor em obter sua própria identidade brasileira como filho de imigrantes ingleses imersos na complexidade do país. Richard Klein nasceu no Rio de Janeiro em 1962 – o mesmo ano em que os Rolling Stones e os Beatles gravaram seus primeiros singles e no mesmo ano em que o Brasil ganhou a sua segunda Copa do Mundo de futebol. Seu pais judaico-ingleses, haviam se mudado para um florescente Rio de Janeiro logo após a 2ª Guerra Mundial e prosperaram. Eles nunca, entretanto, se adaptaram totalmente à sua nova terra, – e certamente ao futebol ou ao rock and roll. Richard, no entanto, cresceria para amar ambos. Richard mostra, em primeira mão, a vida, a diversão e os excessos da elite de sua geração privilegiada pelo regime militar. Sob uma ótica ao mesmo tempo estrangeira e nacional, o autor surpreende o leitor com piadas, aventuras, reflexões e fatos, ao mesmo tempo que consegue fornecer uma imersão em uma época maravilhosamente conturbada da história brasileira.From Muscle Beach to Hollywood superstar to The Governator—Ian Halperin, investigative journalist and # 1 New York Times bestselling author,…
reveals the untold story about the outsized and often outrageous Arnold Schwarzenegger. The former Austrian bodybuilding icon turned movie action hero turned governor of California is portrayed in all his larger-than-life glory in The Governator, an intimate biography that masterfully chronicles the twists and turns of Schwartzenegger’s amazing true-life Horatio Alger story.Discover Florida’s unique places across time through writings from history How has Florida’s land changed across five centuries? What…
has stayed the same, and what remains only in memory? In Tracing Florida Journeys, Leslie Poole delves into the stories of well-known explorers and travelers who came to the peninsula and wrote about their experiences, looking at their words and the paths they took from the perspective of today. In these pages, John Muir and Harriet Beecher Stowe write about their visits to Florida, reflecting their expectations of a place that was touted to be “paradise.” John James Audubon finds riches of bird life in the Keys. Zora Neale Hurston travels to turpentine camps and sawmills documenting the stories and music of workers and residents. Jonathan Dickinson and Stephen Crane recount shipwrecks along a sparsely populated coastline. Members of Hernando de Soto’s violent 1539 expedition of conquest describe their struggles with dense swamps, forests, and rivers, and resistance from the Native people they exploited. Using journals and articles by these and other authors that date back to the early European exploration of the region, Poole retraces their steps. The land they write about is often hard to imagine in today’s Florida, a top destination for tourists filled with almost 22 million residents. These stories show the evolving history of the state and the richness of its natural resources. Poole’s comparisons also point to the people who have been displaced and the ecosystems that have been dramatically altered by exploration and development. Highlighting the Florida that was and the Florida that exists now, Poole brings together historical research, interviews with experts, and her personal experiences to tell a revealing story of the state’s natural history. Funding for this publication was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.Hashish
By Henry De Monfreid. 2007
Nobleman, writer, adventurer and inspiration for the swashbuckling gun runner in the Adventures of Tintin, Henri de Monfried lived by…
his own account ‘a rich, restless, magnificent life’ as one of the great travellers of his or any age. Infamous as well as famous, his name is inextricably linked to the Red Sea and the raffish ports between Suez and Aden in the early years of the twentieth century. This is a compelling account of how de Monfried seeks his fortune by becoming a collector and merchant of the fabled Gulf pearls, then is drawn into the shadowy world of arms trading, slavery, smuggling and drugs. Hashish was the drug of choice, and de Monfried writes of sailing to Suez with illegal cargos, dodging blockades and pirates.From New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides, an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of…
Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook&’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day.&“Sides has mastered the art of you-are-there historical narrative. A thrilling and necessary update to one of history&’s most consequential cultural collisions." —John Vaillant, New York Times bestselling author of Fire Weather and The TigerOn July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment?Hampton Sides&’ bravura account of Cook&’s last journey both wrestles with Cook&’s legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration in the 1700s. Cook was renowned for his peerless seamanship, his humane leadership, and his dedication to science-–the famed naturalist Joseph Banks accompanied him on his first voyage, and Cook has been called one of the most important figures of the Age of Enlightenment. He was also deeply interested in the native people he encountered. In fact, his stated mission was to return a Tahitian man, Mai, who had become the toast of London, to his home islands. On previous expeditions, Cook mapped huge swaths of the Pacific, including the east coast of Australia, and initiated first European contact with numerous peoples. He treated his crew well, and endeavored to learn about the societies he encountered with curiosity and without judgment.Yet something was different on this last voyage. Cook became mercurial, resorting to the lash to enforce discipline, and led his two vessels into danger time and again. Uncharacteristically, he ordered violent retaliation for perceived theft on the part of native peoples. This may have had something to do with his secret orders, which were to chart and claim lands before Britain&’s imperial rivals could, and to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. Whatever Cook&’s intentions, his scientific efforts were the sharp edge of the colonial sword, and the ultimate effects of first contact were catastrophic for Indigenous people around the world. The tensions between Cook&’s overt and covert missions came to a head on the shores of Hawaii. His first landing there was harmonious, but when Cook returned after mapping the coast of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, his exploitative treatment of the Hawaiians led to the fatal encounter.At once a ferociously-paced story of adventure on the high seas and a searching examination of the complexities and consequences of the Age of Exploration, THE WIDE WIDE SEA is a major work from one of our finest narrative nonfiction writers.Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder
By Kenn Kaufman. 2006
An ornithologist&’s account of his youthful, year-long, cross-country birdwatching adventure: &“A fascinating memoir of an obsession.&” —Booklist At sixteen, Kenn…
Kaufman dropped out of the high school where he was student council president and hit the road, hitching back and forth across America, from Alaska to Florida, Maine to Mexico. Maybe not all that unusual a thing to do in the seventies, but what Kenn was searching for was a little different: not sex, drugs, God, or even self, but birds. A report of a rare bird would send him hitching nonstop from Pacific to Atlantic and back again. When he was broke he would pick fruit or do odd jobs to earn the fifty dollars or so that would last him for weeks. His goal was to set a record—most North American species seen in a year—but along the way he began to realize that at this breakneck pace he was only looking, not seeing. What had been a game became a quest for a deeper understanding of the natural world. Kingbird Highway is a unique coming-of-age story, combining a lyrical celebration of nature with wild, and sometimes dangerous, adventures, starring a colorful cast of characters.Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of America
By Ivan Doig. 1982
A blend of modern-day travel memoir and nineteenth-century history, &“infused with the fresh air and spirit of the Northwest&” (The…
New York Times Book Review). The author of the acclaimed This House of Sky and Mountain Time provides a magnificent evocation of the Pacific Northwest through his exploration of the unpublished diaries of James Gilchrist Swan, an early settler of the region who was drawn there from Boston in the 1850s. Winter Brothers fuses excerpts from these diaries with author Ivan Doig&’s own journal entries, as he travels in Swan&’s footsteps one winter along the once-wild coastline of Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. What emerges is a remarkable interaction of two minds, a dialogue across time that links the present with the reality of the American frontier. &“Absorbing . . . A double portrait of striking clarity, yet with wonderfully subtle hues.&” —San Francisco ChronicleThe Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica
By David G. Campbell. 1992
The acclaimed author and biologist shares “a superb personal account [of Antarctica] . . . a remarkable evocation of a land at the…
bottom of the world” (Boston Globe).During the 1980s, biologist David Campbell spent three summers in Antarctica, researching its surprisingly plentiful wildlife. In The Crystal Desert, he combines travelogue, nature writing and science history to tell the story of life's tenacity on the coldest of Earth's continents. Between scuba expeditions in Admiralty Bay, Campbell remembers the explorers who discovered Antarctica, the whalers and sealers who despoiled it, and the scientists who laid the groundwork to decipher its mysteries. Chronicling the desperately short summers in beautiful, lucid prose, he presents a fascinating portrait of the evolution of life in Antarctica and of the continent itself.Winner of the John Burroughs Medal for Natural History Writing and a Houghton Mifflin Literary FellowshipEverest, Inc.: The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World
By Will Cockrell. 2024
Featuring original interviews with mountain guides and climbers—including Jimmy Chin and Conrad Anker—this vivid and authoritative adventure history chronicles one…
of the least likely industries on Earth: guided climbing on Mount Everest.Anyone who has read Jon Krakauer&’s Into Thin Air or has seen a recent photo of climbers standing in line to get to the top of Everest may think they have the mountain pretty well figured out. It&’s an extreme landscape where bad weather and incredible altitude can occasionally kill, but more so an overcrowded, trashed-out recreation destination where rich clients pad their egos—and social media feeds—while exploiting local Sherpas. There&’s some truth to these clichés, but they&’re a sliver of the story. Unlike any book to date, Everest, Inc. gets to the heart of the mountain through the definitive story of its greatest invention: the Himalayan guiding industry. It all began in the 1980s with a few boot-strapping entrepreneurs who paired raw courage and naked ambition with a new style of expedition planning. Many of them are still living and climbing today, and as a result of their astonishing success, ninety percent of the people now on Everest are clients or employees of guided expeditions. Studded with quotes from original interviews with more than a hundred western and Sherpa climbers, clients, writers, filmmakers, and even a Hollywood actor, Everest, Inc. foregrounds the voices of the people who have made the mountain what it is today. And while there is plenty of high-altitude drama in unpacking the last forty years of Everest tragedy and triumph, it ultimately transcends stereotypes and tells the uplifting counternarrative of the army of journeymen and women who have made people&’s dreams come true, and of the Nepalis who are pushing the industry into the future.In this personal journey, ultra-light backpacker and sought-after speaker Glen Van Peski shares the life lessons he has learned through…
years of lightening his pack and helping others.Adventures provide the richness and texture to a life well lived. So remain open. Keep saying yes to life's opportunities. Glen Van Peski helped revolutionize backpacking by creating ultralight equipment, which allows people to take less so they can do more in the wilderness. During decades of championing ultralight backpacking, Glen became aware that &“take less, do more&” is more than just a hiking slogan. As he reduced his pack weight, he realized that the lessons learned applied to all areas of life. Now he wants to share the lessons he learned to help others live full and vibrant lives—lives characterized by purpose, meaning, and joy. In this book, you will discover transformative life lessons, which may go against the grain of popular thought but have been proven to change lives for the better. You'll learn that: Often the best strategy for achieving goals comes from subtracting rather than adding. When your first instinct is generosity, the long-term dividends will be greater than if you strive to gain your own advantage. Revising the stories you tell yourself about situations will reframe your life and increase gratitude. By investing creatively in relationships, you will generate more joy in your life. Making friends with failure will cause you to grow and improve. take less. do more. It's a revolutionary idea that will transform your life and free your soul to find your purpose—and maybe a little bit of adventure too.Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley
By Brent Underwood. 2024
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A long-abandoned silver mine for sale sounded like an adventure too great to pass up, but…
it turned into much more—a calling, a community of millions, and hard-earned lessons about chasing impractical dreams.&“Inspiring and meditative—the story of man vs nature and man vs himself.&”—Ryan Holiday, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Obstacle is the WayThe siren song of Cerro Gordo, a desolate ghost town perched high above Death Valley, has seduced thousands since the 1800s, but few fell harder for it than Brent Underwood, who moved there in March of 2020, only to be immediately snowed in and trapped for weeks.It had once been the largest silver mine in California. Over $500 million worth of ore was pulled from the miles of tunnels below the town. Butch Cassidy, Mark Twain, and other infamous characters of the American West were rumored to have stayed there. Newspapers reported a murder a week. But that was over 150 years ago.Underwood bet his life savings—and his life—on this majestic, hardscrabble town that had broken its fair share of ambitious men and women. What followed were fires, floods, earthquakes, and perhaps strangest, fame. Ghost Town Living tells the story of a man against the elements, a forgotten historic place against the modern world, and a dream against all odds—one that has captured millions of followers around the world.He came looking for a challenge different from the traditional 9-5 job but discovered something much more fulfilling—an undertaking that would call on all of himself and push him beyond what he knew he was capable of. In fact, to bring this abandoned town back to life, Brent had to learn a wealth of new self-sufficiency and problem-solving skills from many generous mentors.Ghost Town Living is a thrilling read, but it&’s also a call to action—to question our too-practical lives and instead seek adventure, build something original, redefine work, and embrace the unknown. It shows what it means to dedicate your life to something, to take a mighty swing at a crazy idea and, like the cardsharps who once haunted Cerro Gordo, go all in.The Mountain: My Time on Everest
By Ed Viesturs, David Roberts. 2013
In national bestseller The Mountain, world-renowned climber and bestselling author Ed Viesturs and cowriter David Roberts paint a vivid portrait…
of obsession, dedication, and human achievement in a true love letter to the world’s highest peak.In The Mountain, veteran world-class climber and bestselling author Ed Viesturs—the only American to have climbed all fourteen of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks—trains his sights on Mount Everest in richly detailed accounts of expeditions that are by turns personal, harrowing, deadly, and inspiring.The highest mountain on earth, Everest remains the ultimate goal for serious high-altitude climbers. Viesturs has gone on eleven expeditions to Everest, spending more than two years of his life on the mountain and reaching the summit seven times. No climber today is better poised to survey Everest’s various ascents—both personal and historic. Viesturs sheds light on the fate of Mallory and Irvine, whose 1924 disappearance just 800 feet from the summit remains one of mountaineering’s greatest mysteries, as well as the multiply tragic last days of Rob Hall and Scott Fischer in 1996, the stuff of which Into Thin Air was made.Informed by the experience of one who has truly been there, The Mountain affords a rare glimpse into that place on earth where Heraclitus’s maxim—“Character is destiny”—is proved time and again.