Customer Reviews

Tenzing: Hero of Everest

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In this thoughtful, well researched and educational book, Ed Douglas has delved far beneath the superficial surface of Tenzing, Sherpas and Himalayan climbing. The history and lead up to the 1953 climb with Ed Hillary is both thoughtful and highly detailed but despite the incredible academic depth and factual information, this book is highly readable and appealing to anyone who seeks knowledge of Tenzing's extraordinary beginnings in Tibet, move to Nepal and settling in Darjeeling to be close to the action for all pre world war 2 expeditions to the Everest region. Douglas's accurate descriptions of some of these early expeditions to Everest and other high peaks make "Into Thin Air" look like a church picnic. Most of all we get a true picture of life as a Sherpa rising to Sirdar status and what singled out Tenzing from all the others. This is a human story complete with all the highs and lows of struggle, family, ambition, success and failure, with eventual world accolade diminishing into depressiion, loneliness and frustration. This is a book that every interested world mountaineer should read. It finally puts into perspective what went on during those amazing decades from the 20s to the 70s.

When I purchased this book I thought that I was going to receive a thrilling biography of the first ascent of MT. Everest. But instead I got a history lesson on the culture, area, and Tenzing's family. I had a hard time staying awake through the beginning and the end of the book. The middle kept me going while Everest was being climbed. The writing was fine. It just was not exciting. So if you are writing a paper for you college history class, check out this book. If you want an exciting mountaineering book, look somewhere else.

It's a biography, not a "mountaineering book" as such. With that understood up front, this life story of Tenzing Norgay provides the reader with both well researched information and thoughtful analysis.

Tenzing Norgay adopted "Sherpa" as his identity only after his 1953 summit of Mt. Everest with New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary. Born to Tibetian parents within sight of the moutain that would change his life so completely, Tenzing at age 20 migrated to Darjeeling - the Indian mountain city famed for its importance to British colonials who summered there - in order to give himself and the family he would soon have a future. In the world of his boyhood and young manhood, borders mattered little. One's identity came from family, not place of birth. Tenzing learned climbing by working for foreign expeditions, in the beginning for the same reason as any other young man of his time and place: because it was how he could make a living. As he learned, though, and as he became friends with some of his employers - most notably Swiss climber Raymond Lambert - Tenzing began to share their passion for making it to the top. That was not among the values of his own culture, and pursuing it set him apart in ways that would persist through the rest of his life. The book is organized to place the summiting of Everest roughly at its mid-point, and that's appropriate because the event defined Tenzing's life in a similar way.

A highly intelligent yet illiterate man who navigated not just two cultures, but many, with surprising success. A back-country tribesman who became a close friend and frequent house guest to India's Prime Minister Nehru. A world traveler whose natural shrewdness in interacting with other people, regardless of culture, sometimes failed him. A father of two families, one born to him in his 20s and the other in his 50s, who wanted the best for all of his children and who did all that he could - as he understood it - to make that happen. Biographer Douglas does a more than creditable job of exploring his subject within the context of background, time, and place. His thoroughness does lead to passages where a reader without a particular interest in that time and place, not just in Tenzing Norgay, may bog down; but otherwise the book is entirely readable, and I found those passages essential to its credibility.

Ed Douglas has met with 70+ people and referred 80+ books to create this biography of Tenzing.

Douglas traces Tenzing's life from humble beginning in Kharta valley, through his rise from yak herder's son to a porter to a Sirdar, the famous assault/climb on the Everest, political frenzy that followed the success, Tenzing's friendship with Nehru, establishing Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Tenzing's personal & family life and his last days.

Douglas also paints a good picture of social & political picture of different times during Tenzing's life. And effect of those conditions on Tenzing's person & personality.

In this book, many a times, Douglas has taken an incident or an event and has tried to give reader an unbiased, all around picture of facts and then tells the reader about "who felt what?", "why did someone do or say something?". He has done so by comparing accounts by different people & from different biographies. Where need be Douglas is not afraid to call spade a spade.

This book was a treat to read.

Thorough, informative and well authenticated but wholly lacking in literary style and readability. As I read the book I thought "with all this information a good editor and the benefit of literary style could have vastly improved the effort!" In reading the book I did discover that I am an unswerving 'linear reader'. No matter how bad the writing became I remained steadfast to the end hoping that this book could redeem itself. This effort will not be seriously considered a notable contribution to the history of climbing Everest. For that sort of book I recommend reading elsewhere.

One has to commend Ed Douglas for this, a highly scholarly and thorough look at the life of a very enigmatic and difficult character. One is left in no doubt that he has thoroughly researched and cross referenced his sources in order to provide this highly detailed portrait.

Yet this book's main failings may just be this tremendous detail. Whilst an ethnographer would no doubt be fascinated with the complex social, religious and family structures of Himalayan life I doubt many readers would be as interested. Douglas lays out Tenzing's story with the cold accuracy of an experienced climber calmly looking for his next hold. Unfortunately this accuracy translates into a cool detachment from the subjects in question. Non mountaineers will find themselves grasping at their own handholds as Douglas assumes both a knowledge of climbing and an intimacy with Everest from his readers. For example, he references the South Col numerous times, yet no where is this feature of the mountain illustrated or explained to us. A good atlas of the Himalayan region is needed by any prospective reader to begin to understand much of Tenzing's expeditions and I think it is inexcusable for a book of this nature not to include such maps and diagrams.

Works on explorers and exploration should contain a wealth of detail but they also need to transcend that information and deliver a passionate portrait of the characters involved. Hero of Everest's textbook-like narrative delivers in the former but is sadly lacking in the latter.