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This book is essentially a compilation of short stories from books written by world class mountaineers. Anyone who is well read in this genre will immediately recognize these short stories from the books they were taken. The stories are exceptionally well written and edited. Some are epic survival tales and others document the never ending string of tragedies that befall many mountaineering expeditions. The format works well even though the stories are in no particular time sequence. I highly recommend this book, and many of the other books from which the stories have been excerpted. Pick some of your favorite short stories from this book and follow up with the complete tomes. You will not be disappointed.

Like everybody else, I read "Into Thin Air" and bought more mountaineering books, this being one. Luckily, climbers tend to be a pretty literary lot, because the basic theme of all these books is : Damn, we're out of food/its cold/ I can't feel my feet/hands/nose/my brain is swelling up/I lost my way/tent/sleeping bag/gloves/I almost (or you DID) fall off this cliff. All this is followed by the endless anticlimax of the summit if reached and, worst of all, endless navel contemplation about the meaning of it all. I don't know why this stuff is so compelling, but there it is. I read this book in four sittings when I had a lot of more important stuff to do. Then I went out and bought Everest: The West Ridge by Tom Hornbein. And I live in Florida , have never been higher than 5,000 feet and have never climbed anything higher than the roof of my house. Go figure. I will say that these mountaineering books have a significant collateral benefit - they scare the hell out of the wife.

This book is a collection of short stories about some very very very dificult climbings in the most dangerous places(mountains) under the most terrible conditions.
Among the stories are some classics like: The West Ridge-Everest(1.st ascent - Hornbein & Unsoeld); Annapurna(1.st ascent - Herzog version); k2 The Savage Mountain(The Schoening belay - by Bates and Houston); McKinley winter's ascent(by Art Davidson).
The book provides a good taste of the dificulties a climber must surpass in order to succed(survive), the only downpoint is that some stories just missed a more tradicional ending, basicaly because in the end you don't know what happened to the climbers, you can only assume they survive.