Postcards from the Ledge: Collected Mountaineering Writings of Greg Child [Hardcover]

Greg Child (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1998

Selections of the best writing from elite mountaineer Greg Child.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers who can survive the funny but graphic first chapter on mountain climbers urinating, defecating, vomiting and coping with bugs, parasites and encrustations of frozen mucus will find the remainder of this book well worth pursuing. The 29 essays included are reworkings of pieces that Child (Thin Air) wrote for Climbing and Outside magazines. They range from accounts of the detritus left on the summits of the world's highest peaks to the furious controversies about two spectacular climbs that some skeptics doubt even took place, although, in one case, the skepticism about a woman's solo ascent of Mt. Everest seems to have resulted from blatant sexism. There are stories of heroism; a tale of tragedy on K2; a picture of the old Tibet, which is being rebuilt by its Chinese conquerors, who, Child reports, are replacing antique treasures with "tumble-down concrete schlock"; and, of course, the author's adventures as he climbed peaks from his native Australia to Europe, Asia and the Americas, the whole enlivened by his civilized wit. For those put off by the coarseness of some of the writing, Child warns us at the outset that language is the "first casualty in the slide toward savagery." 25 b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A solid collection of the authors mountain-climbing journalism, for which he is widely known. Australian climber/writer Child is a man without fear, as these pages reveal, and without much regard for the normal niceties. He writes at length, and with obvious pleasure, about getting sick in snowbanks and on mongrel Tibetan dogs, of various bodily functions at various altitudes. All for good reason, he suggests: Mountains turn mountaineers into Neanderthals. Table manners do not exist on expeditions. Talk is a patois of crude grunts, deranged utterances, and schoolboyish sexual innuendo. Readers with delicate sensibilities will want to shy away from this book, for Child is a faithful reporter of these climbing realities. In more somber and sober moments, however, he writes affectingly of the thrill of climbing the worlds great peaks. Along the way, he looks at several of his colleagues in the business of scaling mountains, and his profiles of todays leading alpinists are uniformly well wrought. Some of those climbers, he writes, are ethically and socially challenged; others are so overwhelmingly fixated on their chosen sport that they cannot function without pitons in hand. And many others, Child writes, are now dead, the victims of some misjudgment or another. He supplies his readers with helpful hints on how to avoid such miscalculations themselves. Usefully, for instance, he observes that ``sitting on cold ledges gives you hemorrhoids. It is not widely known, but many climbers have failed to reach summits due to this undignified condition'' (to avoid falling victim to it, he adds, you should bring along a foam sleeping pad). Veteran readers of Climbing magazine, from which most of these pieces are taken, will be glad to have Childs occasional journalism in book form. (25 b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Mountaineers Books; 1st edition (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898865840
• ISBN-13: 978-0898865844
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,204,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greg describes what others wisely omit, November 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Postcards from the Ledge: Collected Mountaineering Writings of Greg Child (Hardcover)

Greg Child is a famous mountain guide who fearlessly describes what other mountaineering writers omit. He describes everything from bodily functions to theft to dishonest summit claims, to bureaucratic corruption, and all with a great wit and perception. Several of these essays left me gasping for breath from laughter while others, like his story about Alison Hargreave had me fighting tears. My favorite essay is Greg attempting to show off his climbing skills for his mother. Greg Child is one funny guy.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sent certified, insured, return receipt requested..., November 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Postcards from the Ledge: Collected Mountaineering Writings of Greg Child (Hardcover)

Few mountaineers write with quite the prose of Greg Child. "Writer who climbs? Climber who writes?" he himself has mused and many have quoted. What he gives with his accounts of high places is an ever-clear explanation of the inherent dangers and pure exstacy of high-altitude mountaineering and big wall climbing, as easily comprehended by the armchair mountaineer as the Himalayan veteran. My collection of mountaineering literature is great, but most of the wealth therein lies between the pages of his books. Thanks, Greg. You've done it again. A future Himalayan veteran, -C.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Entertaining Book of Essays on the Joys and Tragedies of Mountaineering, March 27, 2008

By 

Tressa - See all my reviews

This review is from: Postcards from the Ledge: Collected Mountaineering Writings of Greg Child (Paperback)

I was searching Amazon for some Joe Simpson books and this one popped up. I thought it was one I missed but then saw that Simpson wrote the introduction to it. It seemed pretty entertaining so I bought a copy.

Greg Child's Postcards from the Ledge is hilarious and touching and informative at the same time. I couldn't stop laughing after reading the essay about him showing his elderly mum just how "safe" mountaineering is. In the end he hobbled away like the hurt little boy his mother knew him to be. I enjoyed learning about the nitty gritty facts of mountaineering, from where and how to use the toilet to stinking to high heaven after being on the mountain for so many weeks.

All joking aside, the mountains can be a dangerous place to be. An example of this is when Childs and his group come across a teenage girl who has fallen to her death into a crevasse. There are also some good essays about Alison Hargreaves' death and the world's reaction to a mother's "selfish" need to climb mountains.

And many things can be learned about other countries and cultures from the small details of his visits to these places.

I'd recommend this book to any mountaineering fans. I'm glad I bought it for my collection.