Mountains of the Mind
Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind was published to mark the 50th anniversary of the first successful ascent of Everest
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Macfarlane is both a mountaineer and a scholar consequently you get more than just a chronicle of climbs
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He interweaves accounts of his own adventurous ascents with those of pioneers such as George Mallory
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With an erudite discussion of how mountains became such a preoccupation for the modern western imagination
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The book is organised around a series of features of mountaineering--glaciers, summits, unknown ranges--and each chapter explores the scientific, artistic and cultural discoveries and fashions that accompanied exploration
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The contributions of assorted geologists, romantic poets, landscape artists, entrepreneurs, gallant amateurs and military cartographers are described with perceptive clarity.
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The book climaxes with an account of Mallory's fateful ascent on Everest in 1924, one of the most famous instances of an obsessive pursuit
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Non-fiction, paperback
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ISBN 9781847080394
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