Moments of Doubt is a collection of 20 essays and articles on mountaineering and adventure by David Roberts, selected from the published works of two decades. It showcases one of the most highly regarded writers in the field.

A collection of the author's favorite twenty adventure stories from the last eleven years

Long established as a standard reference work worldwide, this is a thorough bibliography of all mountaineering books that are of practical use to climbers or for reading pleasure or historical interest. Documenting more than 2000 books of mountaineering literature, it also includes nearly 900 climber's guidebooks, a sampling of more than 400 works of mountaineering fiction, plus journals and bibliographies.

The stories we tell, published or otherwise, condition our mountain experiences in practice and reinforce cultural memory and representation. Yet, as this book and the authors within it set out to demonstrate, if we look beyond the boundaries of this ‘singular white history’ there is a rich diversity of stories to tell. This volume contributes to a growing body of scholarship that calls for a heterogeneity of voices in mountain memoir genres. For the first time, this diverse scholarship interrogates how mountaineering literary and media culture impact bodies, spaces, and places, in order to nuance how commodification intersects across social categories and is embodied in multi-dimensional ways. In this volume, we explore a burgeoning tradition of mountaineering literature, of cinema and of memoir to appreciate difference, beyond the habitual heroic, white male, adventurer that dominates screens and bookshelves. Through exploring multidimensional axes of social differentiation from gender, race, class, and age to dis/ability and sexuality, the book will demonstrate how commodification is embodied through representation in mountaineering literature, media, film and memoir in mountaineering spaces. Amongst our aims, this book intends to understand how multiple social dimensions overlap and work to produce independent systems of exclusion and inclusion that focus on untraditional ways to be a mountaineer.

The Sherpas were dead, two more victims of an attempt to scale Mt. Everest. Members of a French climbing expedition, sensitive perhaps about leaving the bodies where they could not be recovered, rolled them off a steep mountain face. One body, however, crashed to a stop near Sherpas on a separate expedition far below. They stared at the frozen corpse, stunned. They said nothing, but an American climber observing the scene interpreted their thoughts: Nobody would throw the body of a white climber off Mt. Everest. For more than a century, climbers from around the world have journ-eyed to test themselves on Everest's treacherous slopes, enlisting the expert aid of the Sherpas who live in the area. Drawing on years of field research in the Himalayas, renowned anthropologist Sherry Ortner presents a compelling account of the evolving relationship between the mountaineers and the Sherpas, a relationship of mutual dependence and cultural conflict played out in an environment of mortal risk. Ortner explores this relationship partly through gripping accounts of expeditions--often in the climbers' own words--ranging from nineteenth-century forays by the British through the historic ascent of Hillary and Tenzing to the disasters described in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. She reveals the climbers, or "sahibs," to use the Sherpas' phrase, as countercultural romantics, seeking to transcend the vulgarity and materialism of modernity through the rigor and beauty of mountaineering. She shows how climbers' behavior toward the Sherpas has ranged from kindness to cruelty, from cultural sensitivity to derision. Ortner traces the political and economic factors that led the Sherpas to join expeditions and examines the impact of climbing on their traditional culture, religion, and identity. She examines Sherpas' attitude toward death, the implications of the shared masculinity of Sherpas and sahibs, and the relationship between Sherpas and the increasing number of women climbers. Ortner also tackles debates about whether the Sherpas have been "spoiled" by mountaineering and whether climbing itself has been spoiled by commercialism.

A passionate, thought-provoking exploration of walking as a political and cultural activity, from the author of Orwell's Roses Drawing together many histories--of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores--Rebecca Solnit creates a fascinating portrait of the range of possibilities presented by walking. Arguing that the history of walking includes walking for pleasure as well as for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit focuses on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from philosophers to poets to mountaineers. She profiles some of the most significant walkers in history and fiction--from Wordsworth to Gary Snyder, from Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet to Andre Breton's Nadja--finding a profound relationship between walking and thinking and walking and culture. Solnit argues for the necessity of preserving the time and space in which to walk in our ever more car-dependent and accelerated world.

The Mountaineers Books publishes the best in climbing literature, boasting a list of books chronicling the greatest climbing adventures ever pursued. Courage & Misfortune contains gripping accounts of expeditions that encountered violent forces of nature or tragic accidents.

Trips gone wrong, embarrassing incidents, unfortunate pratfalls, and hilarious reflections are part of Over the Top: Humorous Mountaineering Tales, Volume 3; the newest volume in The Mountaineers Anthology Series. Kurt Diemberger's A Lesson in French and Greg Childs' Chalk are examples of climbers' keen appreciation for the absurd, droll, ironic, and hilarious moments in their world.

Doug Scott was a legend among mountaineers. His expeditions, undertaken over a period of five decades, are unparalleled achievements. This book describes the extraordinary drama of them all, from the Himalaya to New Zealand, Patagonia, Yosemite and Alaska. It includes his famous 'epic' on The Ogre, one of the hardest peaks in the world to climb, his ascent of Kangchenjunga without supplementary oxygen and his ascent, with Dougal Haston, of Everest in 1975. Catherine Moorehead also uncovers the elusive man behind the obsessive mountaineer. From his rumbustious youth in Nottingham through two tempestuous marriages to a secure third marriage, she shows how Scott matured in thought and action as his formidable global reputation increased. In doing so she reveals him to be a clash of opposites, an infuriating monomaniac who took extraordinary risks yet who developed a deep interest in Buddhism and inspired widespread affection. Scott spent almost as long as his climbing career in founding and developing Community Action Nepal, providing schools and health posts in remote parts of Nepal, where he is still much revered. Doug Scott died in 2020.