|
| 
 enlarge | Author: Clint Willis
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $1.99
You Save: $25.96 (93%)
New (24) Used (19) from $0.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 393431
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 536
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.8 x 1.8
ISBN: 0786715790
Dewey Decimal Number: 796
EAN: 9780786715794
ASIN: 0786715790
Publication Date: September 14, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new, never opened, in stock, and ships right now.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 A Stunning Book! May 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"From the mid 1950's to mid 1980's, Bonington's Boys changed the nature of climbing Mount Everest. The risks they took and the price they paid is unimaginable but told vividly in this stunning book."
FIlling in the story December 3, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Back in the 1980s, when I was slaving away in grad school, escaping occasionally for a brief hiking trip, or a short cross-country ski outing, I liked to read stories of great expeditions and adventures, on sea and on land. And I think of all the books I read, Chris Bonnington's books of his expeditions were my greatest escape literature. Sitting in my downtown apartment I was transported to the slopes of Everest with Bonnington and his crew, making my way of a narrow rock gully on the face of Everest. When I was out on my skis in the woods, I'd imagine I was working my way through the ice fall, or carrying gear up to advance base camp.
Then in 2000 I read Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air", his personal story of the tragic 1996 Everest expedition, and it stripped away all romance from Himalayan mountaineering; all I was left with was images of pointless death and selfish behavior. I stopped reading mountaineering books. Every trip seemed a pointless risk of human life. Then a few weeks ago I came across "The Boys of Everest" while looking for cross-country ski technique books, and my curiosity was piqued; I bought the book.
Like some of the reviewers, I'm a bit put off by the author's use of imagined interior monologue, especially when depicting the last hours of a climber who disappeared into the mists, never to be seen again. But at the same time, I think Willis does a better job than most writers- including the mountaineers themselves- in explaining exactly why they climb, and why they take such unimaginable risks in pursuit of such intangible rewards. While this doesn't justify the deaths of so many ambitious young men, at the same time it makes them a bit easier to understand.
Some have also faulted the author for his lack of experience in high altitude climbing, and lack of technical detail, or glossing over some important aspect of a given climb. I'm not a climber, and I suspect that most readers won't be, either, and to us, that's not really a fault. There are better books about the specifics of these expeditions written by the climbers themselves, and plenty of books about the techniques of mountaineering. What this book does deliver is a bit of a glimpse intothe lives and the minds of a very select group of men, who changed the face of climbing, and who for a very brief time in the history of the world stood on top of it.
 A history of Bonington June 4, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As many others have mentions this book is a great read for anyone interested in the Bonington period of climbing. Clint Willis does a great job of detailing the events. Although, I did find his musing on what members were thinking right before death annoying. This is not a light read, and not to be confused with a typical adventure book.
Historic data, some uninteresting writing June 1, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I have read about 6 mountain climbing books in the last 12 months. This one was the hardest to get through. I gave this book 3 stars, but at points I wanted to give it 2 stars because the writing made me so angry.
You should read this book if:
* You are really in to the history of mountain climbing
* You don't mind slogging through some boring writing especially in the first 200 pages.
Learning about the people in the book was good and I liked how we got to understand what they were feeling at times on the mountain. The stories about climbing the bigger mountains like Everest and Annapurna held my attention better. Here are the issues I had with the book.
1. There are not enough pictures of the mountains climbed (even though the author states that photographers were hired for many of the expeditions).
2. There are no drawings of the mountains that indicate the routes taken and locations of the camps and locations of extraordinary events. This makes it difficult to visualize where the climbers are on the mountain.
3. The title "The Boys of Everest" did not make much sense to me as some of the men did not even climb Everest and they did not climb it that often. There were so many other mountains climbed in the book, I don't know why Everest was singled out.
4. The subtitle does not make sense either. "...the Tragedy of Climbing's Greatest Generation". Although there are many tragedies described in the book, it's not clear what the true Tragedy is especially considering that climbing high mountains is dangerous and people do sometimes die doing it. The "Greatest Generation" was also not supported. Although many of the climbers did seem great. I had no reference to other climbers or generations of climbers to compare to.
5. The author gets mixed reviews for describing the actual climbing. In the first 200 pages, I often found myself falling asleep when the climbers were climbing. It seemed like there was too much fine detail about how people were moving and what equipment they were using and not enough general detail like "the climbers are at 20,000 feet and have 4,000 feet to go, they will need 2 more days to get used to this altitude."
6. It seems like the author basically left out describing the affects of altitude on these expeditions. In the other books I've read it seems to be a big deal and often what determines if you make it to the top is if your body can adjust to the altitude, but the author did not talk about the affects of altitude on the climbers that much.
7. At times I would have liked to have know if the information was coming directly from a climber's journal or if the author was piecing things together in his own way. When the author described what the characters were thinking before they died you knew that there was no way the author or anyone could know that information, so it made me wonder what else he was making up.
I enjoyed getting the information from this book, but thought it was a really weird read compared to the other mountain climbing books I have read.
Boring May 6, 2007
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I have had a very hard time getting interested in this book. Other mountain climbing books I have read are spellbinding, but this one is definitely not.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
