Cold Wars: Climbing the Line Between Risk and Reality


Andy Kirkpatrick - 2011
    Pushing himself to new extremes, he embarks on his toughest climbs yet - on big walls in the Alps and Patagonia - in the depths of winter.

In Some Lost Place: The first ascent of Nanga Parbat’s Mazeno Ridge


Sandy Allan - 2015
    At ten kilometres in length, the Mazeno is the longest route to the summit of an 8,000-metre peak. Ten expeditions had tried and failed to climb this enormous ridge. Eleven days later two of the team, Sandy Allan and Rick Allen, both in their late fifties, reached the summit. They had run out of food and water and began hallucinating wildly from the effects of altitude and exhaustion. Heavy snow conditions meant they would need another three days to descend the far side of the ‘killer mountain’. ‘I began to wonder whether what we were doing was humanly possible. We had climbed the Mazeno and reached the summit, but we both knew we had wasted too much energy. In among the conflicting emotions, the exhaustion and the elation, we knew our bodies could not sustain this amount of time at altitude indefinitely, especially now we had no water. The slow trickle of attrition had turned into a flood; it was simply a matter of time before our bodies stopped functioning. Which one of us would succumb first?’ In Some Lost Place is Sandy Allan’s epic account of an incredible feat of endurance and commitment at the very limits of survival – and the first ascent of one of the last challenges in the Himalaya.

Echoes: One Climber's Hard Road to Freedom


Nick Bullock - 2012
    Then he discovered the mountains. Making up for lost time, Bullock soon became one of Britain's best climbers, learning his trade in Scotland and Wales, before travelling from Pakistan to Peru.

Revelations


Jerry Moffatt - 2009
    Fiercely ambitious, even as a boy Moffatt was focussed on one thing: being the best in the world. This title tells the story of his meteoric rise to stardom, and how he overcame injury to stay at the top.

In It for the Long Run: Breaking records and getting FKT


Damian Hall - 2021
    

Ascent


Chris Bonington - 2017
        He has undertaken nineteen Himalayan expeditions, including four to Mount Everest which he climbed in 1985 at the age of fifty, and has made many first ascents in the Alps and greater ranges of the world. Along the way we will be fascinated by his many daring climbs, near-death adventures, and the many luminaries of the mountain fraternity he has climbed with, and in some cases - witness their deaths on the rock. The mercurial Dougal Haston; the legendary-tough Don Whillans, the philosopher of the rock Stephen Venables, and the enigmatic Doug Scott, plus many more – this will be an expert’s opinion on the past sixty years of British/ world mountaineering.In Ascent Chris also discusses his first wife (Wendy) who tragically passed away after a long battle with motor neuron disease  - his many years of caring for her, and then in his twilight years deciding to return to an iconic climb from his past - The Old Man of Hoy - to summit at the age of 80 years of age. He has now also found love again amidst the sadness and grief. It is a truly inspirational tale.     Ascent will be a memoir like no other. Not only a cerebral narrative on what it takes to conquer fear, and learn/ develop the technical skills necessary to climb the world’s greatest peaks; what it is like to survive in places no human being can ultimately reside in for longer than a few months at very high altitude, but also how one overcomes emotional obstacles, too, and rediscover what drives us on to happiness.

Sea Legs: One Family's Year on the Ocean


Guy Grieve - 2013
    Sick of the weather, perennial colds and their increasingly routine lifestyle, they’d all been getting restless. Finally, Guy and Juliet broke in spectacular style – they re-mortgaged their house and bought a yacht. Her name was Forever.The plan? To pick up Forever from her mooring in the Leeward Antilles off the coast of Venezuela, and sail around the West Indies before crossing the Atlantic back to Scotland. This was despite the fact that Guy, skipper of the expedition, had almost no sailing experience.Travelling around the lush tropical islands of the Caribbean and up the waterways of America, the family had countless sublime moments as they discovered the freedoms of sailing – anchoring in deserted bays, night passages under star-studded skies, and entering New York by water, greeted by the Statue of Liberty. But there were also testing times as they grappled with seasickness and bad weather, coping with young children at sea and learning to run a large, complex boat. Far from being the idyllic escape they’d envisaged, the journey forced Guy and Juliet to draw on reserves of courage and endurance they never knew they had.Wry, funny and buccaneering, this is a compelling tale of bravery and endeavour, out on the open sea.

Illustrated Biography of William Shakespeare ("Popular Life Stories")


Manju Gupta - 2014
    He has left behind nearly a million words of text, but his life is still a mystery. This book is an engaging introduction to a subject that students will certainly encounter many times throughout their education—and their lives. Lucid language and dramatic illustrations re-create the Bard's world of kings and queens, fairies and potions, and bloody beheadings. It imparts an amazing amount of vivid, interesting material about place, period and background of Shakespeare. This sweeping account is a biography, a history, and a retelling of some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays—all in one approachable volume. Salient Features: • Shakespeare's Early Life • Life as Playwright and Actor • Theatre Companies • Style of Presentation • Last Years of Life • England of Shakespeare's Days • Drama in Shakespeare's Days • Shakespeare's Greatness as a Poet • Shakespeare's Influence • Works of Shakespeare in detail • Principal Facts of Shakespeare's Life

True State Trooper Stories


Charles A. Black - 2016
    Sgt. Charles Black is a 35 year veteran of the Iowa State Patrol during those years he has had many experiences and he shares his favorites in this book. In 35 years I have seen a lot of changes from the name of the organization to the primary function. From hearses to ambulances to rescue units with EMT's. From paper list of stolen cars to computers.From no recorders to body cameras. From fist fights to gun fights.But human nature and the effects of drugs and alcohol remain the same.

Massively Violent & Decidedly Average


Lee Howey - 2018
    These were household names with glory-laden careers whose exploits on the pitch will never be forgotten. Yet, despite access to such fabulous raw material, they have mostly produced bloody awful books – predictable, plodding, repetitive, self-important and just plain boring. They may have been better footballers than Howey, but he has written the most entertaining football memoir you are ever likely to read. Not that Lee Howey’s football career is in any way undistinguished. He won the First Division Championship with his beloved Sunderland in 1995 and played in the Premier League against some of the most celebrated names in English football, including Jürgen Klinsmann, Ryan Giggs, Eric Cantona, Gianfranco Zola, Peter Schmeichel, Ian Wright, Alan Shearer and Fabrizio Ravanelli – and not always unsuccessfully. It wasn’t all assaults upon the kneecaps on wet Tuesday nights in Hartlepool (though there is plenty of that too).This honest, thoughtful and hilarious book may not end with an unforgettable game at Wembley, or a 100th England cap. However, it will amuse and delight fans of all teams in its portrait of the game of football before it disappeared up its own backside.

Everest '96


Ken Vernon - 2015
    We usually only read about the best - about the bravery, the courage and the sacrifice of mountaineers who risk life and limb to achieve excellence for themselves and others. But there are other mountaineers – the charlatans, the conmen, the bullies, the petty-minded and narcissistic - who prefer to sacrifice others to their obsession to reach the top of Mt. Everest. This book is about one of the worst! In 1996, the deadliest year in the history of climbing Mt. Everest, both types were on the mountain. But in a cruel twist of fate the good guys died while the bad guy not only reached the top, but lived to prosper from it. In a piece of top class investigative journalism Ken Vernon delves into the guts of one dysfunctional expedition that, despite being supported by the iconic Nelson Mandela, became an international laughing stock. Everest ‘96 also peels back the layers of deception surrounding the fantastic past of the man who became the most reviled in mountaineering lore. Ken Vernon is an Australian journalist with decades of experience covering stories ranging from the African wars of Independence to the climbing of Mt Everest.

Ueli Steck: My Life in Climbing


Ueli Steck - 2018
    This deeply personal and revealing memoir, Ueli Steck: My Life in Climbing, is the only one of his books to be published in English.In 2016, Ueli established a new speed record on Eiger's North Face--beating his own record! That same year he climbed all 82 four-thousand-meter peaks in the Alps within 62 days (traveling between the peaks by bicycle), and summited Annapurna's south face in 28 hours. But the dramatic events of the previous two years--the internationally reported conflict with Sherpas at Mount Everest, and the discovery of Alex Lowe's body on Shishapangma--changed him and made him rethink his approach to the mountains.After withdrawing from the sport for a period, Ueli rediscovered his love of climbing, and in this memoir he explains how his perspective changed. While his drive to achieve in the mountains hadn't diminished, an evaluation of his experiences helped him find a new way to process the emotional and mental challenges that shaped his athletic outlook. Structured around key climbs, Ueli Steck: My Life in Climbing provides the history of each mountain and route, Ueli's reasons for attempting it, what happened on each climb itself, and what he learned from the experience. It also includes some fascinating insights into his training regimen.Ueli infuses his story with the joy and freedom of climbing and running. He is honest, direct and, at times, exhibits the self-absorption common to many elite athletes. Ultimately, however, his experiences brought him to a place of self-awareness and he was no longer the same climber who first set the speed record on the Eiger's North Face. Ueli was determined that he would take only acceptable risks. Unfortunately, Ueli's bar for risk was still very high--he died while on a training climb on the Himalayan peak Nuptse on April 30, 2017.

Postcards from the Ledge


Greg Child - 1998
    With clever wit, sharp observations, and insightful reflections, Child's writing covers the full spectrum of the mountaineering experience.Entertaining even to those who have never been above sea level, Child's stories reveal climbing's other face. His description of the daily habits of mountaineers on expedition (who don't bathe for months) is both disgusting and horrifyingly funny. A post-climb fiasco in the offices of petty Pakistani bureaucrats proves that not all epics take place on high mountain faces. Falling of a rock climb in front of his mother is an exercise in humility.Child takes up climbing controversy with the same keen insight. His investigation of Tomo Cesen's claimed first ascent of Lhotse's south wall is considered the definitive report on this controversial event. A hard look at the media frenzy around the death of Alison Hargreaves on K2 evolves into a brilliant, impassioned defense of a friend. He also speaks out on the money- and media-driven expeditions that now crowd Everest.But Child never preaches. Whether contrasting his clumsy performance with Lynn Hill's elegant moves on a climb in the remote mountains of Kyrgyzstan or reflecting upon artifacts (from crucifixes to pink flamingos) that decorate the world's highest peaks, he writes it as he sees it, with a dose of wit. A true insider, Greg Child draws us deep into the world of climbing but never denies its dark side.

NEVEREST New Insights: Inside Scott Fischer's Mountain Madness Expedition (Mountain Mania Book 1)


Nick van der Leek - 2015
    His distillation was described at the time by THE CLIMB co-author, Weston DeWalt, as ‘the clearest exposition of the 1996 disaster I have ever seen’. Now, nine years later, having honed his penmanship within the rigors and deceits of the True Crime genre, Nick van der Leek is taking on the Everest narrative once more but with a fresh approach. Compared to his 2006 article, NEVEREST is a much larger and deeper analysis of the events leading up to ‘the deadliest day on Mount Everest [May 10]. Van der Leek makes no bones about the purpose of this narrative: “We’ll be treating the 1996 disaster as a criminal investigation; and the mountain itself as a crime scene.” From this unique and fascinating vantage point the reader is dragged back into a deadly ‘storm over Everest’, one that brings readers and amateur climbers face to face with something more terrifying than the mountain itself. What are the motives of the men climbing the world’s tallest mountain? What Van der Leek manages to achieve in NEVEREST is to show the naked ambition and base morality of many of the men and women who returned from the dismal heights to a hero’s welcome. What if some of them weren’t heroes? Using the psychology ‘it takes a thief to catch a thief’ professional photojournalist and one time climber of Kilimanjaro, Nick van der Leek demystifies the heroism of climbing. “The question is whether climbing a real mountain is an authentic process towards growing ones symbolic self, and the question is whether climbing the world’s highest mountain means accessing the highest parts of the self.” Would we climb that mountain if there were no picture taken at the top? Would we still push for the summit if it meant coming back and not telling a soul? By following the narrative of the MOUNTAIN MADNESS team, Van der Leek investigates and cross references what Scott Fischer’s mostly American crew and clients did right as opposed to their rivals on Everest: Adventure Consultants [five members of Hall’s team died on the mountain including Rob Hall]. As Van der Leek pursues an explanation to account for this incongruity he finds and then mines the golden thread buried within the great mountain. Were the teams locked in a deadly rivalry, or did they just run out of oxygen and time? Was it the weather or human error or the result of something else? What role did hubris play in Everest’s deadliest day, and what role does it play in your life?

K2: One Woman's Quest for the Summit


Heidi Howkins - 2001
    A first-person account of the American K2000 expedition by Heidi Howkins who if successful, would be the first American woman to successfully summit the world's most notorious and challenging mountain.