Paul Preuss

By David Smart,

Book cover of Paul Preuss: Lord of the Abyss: Life and Death at the Birth of Free-Climbing

Book description

Shortlisted for the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature


Shortlisted for the 2019 Boardman Tasker Award


An intriguing biography of the renowned Austrian alpinist Paul Preuss, who achieved international recognition both for his remarkable solo ascents and for his advocacy of an ethically "pure" alpinism (meaning without any…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Paul Preuss as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I must admit that I have a very personal reason for liking this book. Paul Preuss was my great-uncle. This is a book more about mountaineering than about skiing, but as an elite mountaineer of the early 20th century, Preuss was a pioneer of skiing as well as mountain climbing. There have been three previous books written about Preuss’s life and exploits, two by renowned climber, Reinhold Messner and one by an Italian climber/author named Severino Casara, but the book by Mr. Smart is the first English language book about the life and achievements of Paul Preuss. Preuss was not…

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Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

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