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Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the Alps | 
 enlarge | Author: Fergus Fleming
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 431435
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 0802138675
Dewey Decimal Number: 909
EAN: 9780802138675
ASIN: 0802138675
Publication Date: March 12, 2002
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
In antiquity, travelers did not enter the Alps gladly. One Roman noted that "everything in the mountains is frozen solid," while St. Ambrose, after seeing his first glacier, feared that the world would end by being suffocated in ice; heeding them, voyagers took the long way around whenever they could. All that changed in the 1800s, writes Fergus Fleming in this highly entertaining chronicle, when travelers under the spell of Enlightenment philosophers and Romantic poets came to the Alps looking for a hint of heaven on earth. Those who, for many reasons, wanted to get a little closer to the deity attempted the first recreational climbs of the mountains. They were an odd lot, indeed. One was Albert Smith, who burdened his porters with wheels of cheese and casks of wine, made his way up Mont Blanc, had a feast, and turned his adventures into a stage play that wowed London audiences throughout the 1850s. Another was the natural scientist John Tyndall, who regarded the Alps as the devil's work but nonetheless raced against his compatriot Edward Whymper to climb the Matterhorn. Still another was William Coolidge, an American-born Oxford don who made Whymper's already unhappy life just a little less pleasant. Fleming writes winningly of their "conquest" of the mountains--which, of course, has not kept succeeding generations from attempting new routes up the Alps with every climbing season. Mountaineering buffs and armchair travelers alike will enjoy his account. --Gregory McNamee
Product Description
In a riveting narrative of daredevils and eccentrics, Fergus Fleming gives us the breathtaking story of some of history's greatest explorers as they conquer the soaring peaks of the Alps. Fleming recounts the incredible exploits of the men whose centuries-old fear of the mountain range turned quickly to curiosity, then to obsession, as they explored Europe's frozen wilderness. In the late eighteenth century French and Swiss scientists became interested in the Alps as a research destination, but in the 1850s the focus changed: the icy mountains now offered an all-out competition for British climbers who wanted to conquer ever higher and more impossible heights, and explorers fought each other on the peaks and in the press, entertaining a vast public smitten with their bravery, delighted by their personal animosities, and horrified by the disasters that befell them. "...excellent popular history, with its proper share of mad dogs and Englishmen....Fleming's rendition is dramatic and masterful." -- Anthony Brandt, National Geographic Adventure
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Thoroughly enjoyable, well written survey of alpine exploration (with a somewhat botched finale) January 26, 2008
"Killing Dragons" is an engrossing series of portraits of men and mountains woven into a chronology of alpine exploration that spans 150 years. The bulk of the narrative focuses on two big, suggestive mountains - Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn - and their two principal suitors: de Saussure and Whymper. But there are delightful side roles for a whole throng of colourful characters such as Bourrit, Forbes, Tyndall, Ruskin, Stephen and Coolidge. Ultimately it's also a story about how surprisingly quickly and drastically man's relationship to nature can change: in barely two centuries the general mood regarding the mountain world switched from superstitious awe to scientific interest to exploratory zeal to nationalist competition to, ultimately, solipsistic thrill-seeking (which is still the dominant ethos today).
Fergus Fleming is a masterful storyteller with a penchant for tongue-in-cheeck humour, quirky details and the burlesque. In one or two cases it's even over the top, as when he inserts a footnote with a deadpan comment of Edward Whymper on the ubiquity of "cretins" (deformed, mentally handicapped people) and goitre sufferers in rural Alpine communities: "Let them be formed into regiments by themselves, brigaded together, and commanded by cretins. Think what esprit de corps they would have! Who could stand against them? Who would understand their tactics?" An example of a more successful gag comes when Fleming comments on the death of Coolidge who, after the demise of his beloved aunt Meta Brevoort, withdrew and became and quarrelsome, exasperatingly punctilious Alpine historian. Fleming: "An imp of perversity was loose in Grindelwald that season - either that or the Swiss possessed a keener sense of humour than they were normally credited with - for the great pedant was given an exquisitely apt send-off. The 'Echo of Grindelwald" misspelled his name in its official notice, the authorities put the wrong age on his headstone and the carver missed out the the 'u' in 'mountains'." The book is full of these kinds of hilarious observations. (Incidentally, Fleming himself may have something of Coolidge's pedantry as he is remarkably scrupulous about spelling of French and Germain toponyms throughout the book).
On the whole, Fleming does an admirable job in weaving the locales, the societal trends, the climbing epics, the individual characters and their relationships and rivalries into a rich tapestry. My only complaint is that this book refers only in passing to and omits a more extensive discussion on Albert Mummery, an important and colourful character who heralded a new era in mountaineering. His remarkable ascents on the great Alpine peaks (Zmutt ridge on the Matterhorn, amongst many others) and his fantastic daring to be the very first to attack a Himalayan 8.000 meter peak (already in 1895!) would have been a more fitting and logical conclusion to this very British epic than the unsavoury story of the German siege on the north face of the Eiger.
Suprised to see only three stars July 15, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am surprised to see only a 3-star rating average currently for this book. I thought it was an engrossing read for anyone with an interest in the history and development of alpinism in general and tourism in the Alps. I had recently read Trevor Braham's "When The Alps Cast Their Spell" which left me cold. Despite it winning the Boardman Tasker Prize I found it dense and dull. Starting into Fleming's Killing Dragons I was wondering why I was reading a book that covered so much of same ground, and expected to more or less skim through it, but I soon found myself hooked.
Braham focused on the players: each chapter is centered on one major figure from the era. Fleming instead works chronologically through the development of the key mountains and towns, and, although he does attach the narrative to each character for a time (especially to Whymper), he really follows the succession of challenges: Mount Blanc, the Matterhorn, the Meije, the Eiger Nordwand. This structure lets him write a book that maintains a sense of suspense and drama that is rare in non-fiction.
 So-so read for a long bivouac December 22, 2003
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Fleming is not, as one reviewer states, a "great writer"; he is, in fact, a fairly dull, lazy one, given to repeating himself, relying on second-hand sources (i.e., he quotes other writers quoting Dumas, Dickens, etc.) rather than the originals, and he has a silly, reductive view of theism (i.e., one either believes in natural development OR God and dragons). I can't say I *enjoyed* reading this book all that much, but it did make me want to hunt down books on mountaineering by Leslie Stephen and Edward Whymper, among others. Fleming approaches his subject--the popularization of the Alps--not from a mountaineering or literary or scientific point of view, but rather from a social one. He is very much concerned about whether so and so was a snob or a gentleman, and that's fine, but prospective readers should be aware. I would much prefer a more technical discussion of climbing, but Ferguson doesn't seem all that well-suited for this. Having bashed this book pretty well, I have to admit I learned from it and am glad I read it. It beats reading Bill O'Reilly or being poked in the eye with a sharp stick.
 Almost entirely Mount Blanc & the Matterhorn March 28, 2003
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
It was hard to decide whether to give this book four stars or five. The book isn't anywhere near to being a complete history of the conquest of the alps (con), but what is here is extremely well-written and interesting stuff which I could barely put down (pro) even though it's a pretty hefty 360 pages in all.The first half of the book (176 pgs) is devoted to Mount Blanc, starting in prehistory, working up to its first ascent in 1786, and then continuing on up til the mid-nineteenth century. More than just the climbs themselves enters into the story. Fleming is as much concerned with the philosophical and cultural meaning of the exploits as with the exploits themselves. So he tries to give us a feel for their context in the wider scheme of things and what the people were like who were doing these things. The amount and variety of material which Fleming has researched and brought into the mix is what makes the reading so fascinating. There's everything from what the mountain villages were like to the scientific debate over why glaciers move. Most of the second half of the book concerns itself with the eventual first ascent of the Matterhorn (1865) and the events surrounding it in the decade before. If Mount Blanc was all about ice, the Matterhorn is obviously all about rock. The author's obviously British perspective weighs heavily in here, which is where we get the most info on first ascents other than the two principals -- esp. if they were done by Whymper as warm-ups for the big prize. Only the last twenty pages or so is devoted to the "modern" (post-Mummery) era, and the concentration so far as the detail is concerned is on the Eiger North Face. So even if the coverage is much more limited than I would have preferred, Fleming is such an accomplished story-teller that I could recommend this to climbers and non-mountaineers alike.
Alpine History December 13, 2002
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
British historian-author Fergus Fleming has recently been a prolific chronicler of the so-called "Golden Age of Exploration." Since 1999, he has published three relatively lengthy antholgy type works, including "Barrow's Boys," about British Polar and African exploration in the first half of the 19th Century, and his recent "Ninety Degrees North," about the numeorus attempts to conquer the North Pole."Killing Dragons," the second of the three, also has the least interesting topic. The polar and African expeditions were mammoth affairs that taxed those who participated in them to the limit, often killing or horribly maiming them. By contrast, being the first person to scale an Alp, as we know today not by far the most imposing of mountains, just doesn't rate as an achievement. Still, the book is interesting as an historical account of the beginnings of the sport of mountaineering. Fleming is an excellent writer and a good stroyteller. Parts of "Killing Dragons" are quite thrilling, particularly his accounts of the conquest of the Matterhorn and the first ascent of Mount Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps. Between such events, however, the story lags. The history of the founding of Britains Alpine Club and squabbles among its illustrious members, for example, isn't exactly the kind of stuff that takes your breath away. Overall, "Killing Dragons" is better as a work of history than as a collection of adventure stories.
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