Since they were once avoided at all costs, how have mountains, in the space of three centuries, come to exert such a strange and sometimes fatal hold on the imagination, moving millions every year to risk their lives? The author of this engaging book seeks to answer these questions.

You are an experienced mountain climber. Your goal is to reach the top of the world's highest and most dangerous mountains. Will you attempt to: scale Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro? Climb the Matterhorn in Europe? Reach the top of the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest? You choose what you'll do next. The choices you make will either lead you to safety - or to doom.

To Luca Matthews the dangers of the high mountain peaks are the air upon which he thrives. In the pursuit of his goals he would sacrifice anything. His friends and family know and fear it. So when he sights a virgin peak in the Himalayas that exists on no map, no one is surprised when he becomes obsessed with being the first to scale it.

?I believe that nothing is impossible if you dare to dream, plan and take action. I?m an ordinary girl who simply refused to give up on a dream, and that?s all it takes to succeed in life.? Alyssa Azar is unstoppable. When she was just eight years old, she walked the gruelling Kokoda Track, the youngest person in the world to do so. At 12 she climbed the 10 highest peaks in Australia. Two years later she touched the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. Now,...

This is W.E. Bowman's account of the leader of an expedition up Rum Doodle, a 40,000-and-a-half-foot peak in the Himalayas. This classic spoof of mountaineering draws on the real-life expedition of Nandi Devi by Bill Tilman.

This is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest, when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history. In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall. Despite the expertise...

The first successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay is a familiar saga, but less well known are tales of the many other adventurers who came to test their skills and courage against the world's highest and most dangerous mountains.

In February 1966, two teams - one German, the other British/American - aimed to climb the notorious North Face of the Eiger. Astonishingly, the two teams knew little about each other's attempt until both arrived at the foot of the face. The race was on. John Harlin led the four-man British/American team and intended to make a swift dash for the summit. The Germans, with an eight-man team and a mass of equipment, planned a slow, relentless ascent....

This is Sherpa Tenzing's son, Jamling Norgay's account of the 1996 IMAX climb to the summit of Everest that met with tragedy. It recounts the physical and mental journey Jamling undertook as he realised his desire to stand alongside his father's soul.

Amid all the foreign adventurers that throng to Nepal to scale the world's highest peaks there exists a small tribe of mountain people at the foothills of Himalayas. Sherpa tells their story. It's the story of endeavour and survival at the roof of the world. The story dives into their culture and tells of their existence at the edge of life and death. It traces their story pre- and post-mountaineering revolution, their evolution as climbing crusaders...