The Boys of Everest: Chris Bonington and the Tragedy of Climbing's Greatest Generation (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With nowhere to go but down after the 1953 conquest of Mt. Everest, mountain climbing was reinvigorated by the group of young British daredevils celebrated in this gripping adventure saga. Journalist and mountain-climber Willis (Epic) profiles elder statesman Bonington and such climbing legends as the truculent working-class prodigy Don Whillan, the austere ex-seminarian Joe Tasker and the perpetually brooding Dougal Haston, "a beatnik's idea of a Romance poet." Their ethos of anti-establishment authenticity drove them to extreme climbs in which smaller teams working with minimal gear tackled harder routes under riskier conditions. Willis narrates almost step-by-step retracings of their ascents; they dodge falling rocks, freeze and hallucinate, dangle from fraying ropes and slip heart-stoppingly into crevasses. (Some of this detail, like the reconstructions of the last thoughts of men who died on the mountain, must be imagined rather than factual.) Less compelling are the many poetic evocations of the existential mystery of climbing—"a pilgrimage, an act of faith that arose from a sense of their own emptiness"—which add little to the standard "Because it's there." Fortunately, the spiritual musings don't obscure the bracing immediacy of Willis's story of life spent teetering on the edge of the abyss. Photos. (Oct. 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"A death-haunted saga of the scalers of heaven...the same class and caliber (as) Into Thin Air." -- Kirkus Reviews

"A dramatic and romantic look at the greatest generation of climbers." -- Library Journal

"Riveting, detailed, and full of insight . . . a refreshingly honest perspective on the tragic, selfish nature of our sport." -- Climbing magazine --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (October 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786720247
• ISBN-13: 978-0786720248
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #544,049 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #23 in

  Books > History > Asia > Nepal

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good read with some major flaws, March 18, 2007

By	Constant Reader (Gloucester MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Boys of Everest: Chris Bonington and the Tragedy of Climbing's Greatest Generation (Hardcover)

There are a lot of great things about this book: it's certainly well-written, it deals with loss and with death as well as with the motives that draw climbers to these mountains, and it intersperses the fascinating history of postwar British climbing with gripping descriptions of the actual climbs. It suffers from two flaws, tho', one small, one big. The small is that it has no maps; unless you're familiar with these mountains, you're left guessing ascent routes (these matter a great deal, since a large part of what Bonington's generation did was pioneer new routes up classic mountains). The larger problem, as the Publishers Weekly points out, is that it's written very internally; we get a lot of inside-the-climber's-head and especially what-they-are-thinking-as-they-die moments that are based on... what? The acknowledgments thank Bonington for giving the author two mornings; this book is not based much on firsthand interviews etc., so how could Willis have this information? Since all of the internal dialogue/deaththoughts sound exactly the same, it's a fair bet that they're Willis' projections-- but he's a journalist, and while a fair climber, certainly not even close to being a member of the group he so fervently chronicles. In the end, I was left with the uncomfortable feeling that I was reading Willis' own projections of his motives and thoughts of climbing onto a group of men very different from him, and in their most vulnerable moments-- as they climbed, and as they died. Like Krakauer's Into Thin Air, a book that tells a great mountain story, but in the end is far too much about the author, in a way that both seems intrusive and perhaps gets in the way of the story he wants to be telling.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Lived On The Mountains While Reading This Book, October 21, 2006

By	Suzanne Barlyn (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Boys of Everest: Chris Bonington and the Tragedy of Climbing's Greatest Generation (Hardcover)

Reading The Boys of Everest is the closest I'll ever come to entering the small circle of hard-core mountaineers. I devoured this book and missed living in its world when I was done. Clint Willis' descriptions and images are so vivid that I could have been a quiet companion, somehow participating with Chris Bonington and his brethren from a safe place in the bone chilling cold. I almost felt dizzy from unimaginable heights, disoriented and physically ill from altitude sickness, and sick with grief each time a climber, whom I had come to know, perished on a mountain. The book continued to engage me, even though the circumstances were often heartbreaking. In that sense, I nearly adopted the characters' mindsets: I had to keep going through the next chapter, and the next mountain, despite the sadness of losing someone on the previous one. Through Clint Willis' incredible prose, I've been able to dwell inside the heads of fascinating people.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Willis Gets It Right, October 19, 2006

By	Max Alexander "author of Man Bites Log" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Boys of Everest: Chris Bonington and the Tragedy of Climbing's Greatest Generation (Hardcover)

As an armchair mountain climber (I read these books out of amazement that anyone would ever try these stunts), I have to say that author Willis is at the top of the heap. He not only seems to get what's going on in the heads of extreme mountain climbers, but he knows how to convey it--in gripping prose that is never clicheed. I have some of Willis' anthologies of adventure writing, so I know he is well-read in the genre (and a mountaineer himself). He has clearly absorbed the best of that writing, and turned it into something fresh in his own effort. Paradoxically, for a story that celebrates a bunch of social misfits, the book is full of wisdom about how to live life. This is no ordinary biography. As for the actual climbing passages--good luck putting this book down. I had to force myself not to flip ahead and see who dies next.