Customer Reviews:
 With Sir Edmund Hillary's passing, much of the mountaineering world's remaining grace, humility and reverence have vanished. March 17, 2008
Sir Edmund Hillary, the great mountaineer from New Zealand and Sherpa colleague Tenzing Norgay, battled their way across the slanting snowfields and violent winds, up rocky cliffs and around the icy cornices to the 29,002-foot summit of Mt. Everest. Indeed, a New Zealand beekeeper was one of the first two men ever to stand on top of the world. Hillary was to be even more deeply respected in his lifetime because of the way he used his fame. His strength was not merely physical. It was spiritual, too, which gave him the higher purpose of devoting his later energies to the welfare of the Sherpas - buildings, schools and clinics, bridges, airfields and monastery reconstructions that were sponsored by his Himalayan Trust. During his next 55 years, he was to become one of the most honored men on earth. The most unpretentious and unpompous of mountaineers, He was the opposite of that contemporary mediocrity, the Celebrity, and a genuinely heroic non-celeb. In 2008, He died at the age of 88.
Edmund Hillary went to Nepal to climb Mount Everest. He left behind schools, hospitals and health clinics. Today, more often than not climbers arrive with helicopters and TV cameras and in their wake leave a mountain littered with trash and corpses. Hillary was a humble and selfless, insisting that he and Sherpa colleague conquered the mountain as one, refusing the distinction of being the first. Climbers today pound their chests and stuff their bottomless egos with self-aggrandizement. With Sir Edmund Hillary's passing, much of the mountaineering world's remaining grace, humility and reverence have vanished.
- Brian D'Ambrosio
 A titanic figure. Humble, generous, driven - a man who lived for 55 years in Everest's shadow. January 14, 2008
Sir Edmund Hillary was an extraordinary man, who grew up in the most humble surroundings and driven, ultimately by his lifelong sense of being inadequate: of not measuring up. He suffered this at the hands of a cold father, and at a prestigious school that offered discouragement to young Edmund - labelling him as as an awkward misfit.
Solitary by nature, he found in New Zealand a love for the outdoors and a passion for the mountains. Of course by 1953 his fitness, and drive, took him to the top of Mt Everest, alongside Tenzing Norgay, and for the next 55 years Hillary lived in the shadow of that mountain.
By his choice he spent most of these incredible years giving himself to the people of Nepal - helping build schools, hospitals and airstrips not only through fund raising, but through hard physical work. In a sense he found a place where he really belonged and where he was loved.
Ed Hillary's own books suffer somewhat because his story has been too often repeated. How many times has he been asked to describe the feat of scaling Everest? Over the years the story has been worn through familiarity and its power eroded - and his own writing has shown not only this natural erosion, but has also revealed his own taciturn unwillingness to discuss himself in depth.
In this volume however, Johnston performs a wonderful job in capturing the heart of the man, and the glory of his personal journey. His commitment to the people of Nepal is an inspiration that has helped fire many others including fellow mountaieer Greg Mortenson Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time.
Many of our world heroes, I'm thinking of Gagarin, or of Neil Armstrong, largely withdrew from public life. Hillary, perhaps because of his personal self-doubt kept trying to conquer his own sense of inadequacy, and as a result became an accessible soul who will continue to inspire.
This book is, in my view, the best of the Hillary books available.
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