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As a history and travel writer, I had always heard the siren song of the Alps. Deciding to try (unsuccessfully) to ignore my fear of heights, I take a hair-raising tour across most of the highest passes of the Alps, through France, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany and Slovenia. So many boundaries crossed: linguistic, religious, historical, political, even culinary. I learned the Alps are not a monolith, they are a polyphony.
In a travelogue which spends much of its time in the Alps, Twain delivers anecdotes of haplessness that will make readers smile, if not laugh out loud. Twain portrays himself as an American naif who thinks he understands everything while actually understanding nothing at all.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been…
Forsaking Home is a story about the life of a man who wants a better future for his children. He and his wife decide to join Earth's first off-world colony. This story is about what risk takers and courageous settlers and what they would do for more freedom.
As a history and travel writer, I had always heard the siren song of the Alps. Deciding to try (unsuccessfully) to ignore my fear of heights, I take a hair-raising tour across most of the highest passes of the Alps, through France, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany and Slovenia. So many boundaries crossed: linguistic, religious, historical, political, even culinary. I learned the Alps are not a monolith, they are a polyphony.
The monster of the Bernese Alps, the north face of the Eiger (“the Ogre”), a sheer face of rock taunting and tempting intrepid Alpinists, resisted all attempts to climb it until 1938. Prior to that, climbers fell to their deaths with distressing frequency, made even more macabre by an accident of touristic geography that provided a luxury hotel on a nearby hillock with an unobstructed view of the serial catastrophes. The Austrian Herrer at last summited the face in this white-knuckle tale of determination, grit and luck.
A classic of mountaineering literature, this is the story of the harrowing first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, the most legendary and terrifying climb in history.
Heinrich Harrer, author of 'Seven Years in Tibet' and one of the twentieth century's greatest mountaineers, was part of the team that finally conquered the Eiger's fearsome North Face in 1938. It was a landmark expedition that pitted the explorers against treacherous conditions and the limits of human endurance, and which many have since tried - and failed - to emulate.
Armed with an intimate knowledge that comes only from first-hand…
As a history and travel writer, I had always heard the siren song of the Alps. Deciding to try (unsuccessfully) to ignore my fear of heights, I take a hair-raising tour across most of the highest passes of the Alps, through France, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany and Slovenia. So many boundaries crossed: linguistic, religious, historical, political, even culinary. I learned the Alps are not a monolith, they are a polyphony.
Swiss novelist Ramuz delivers a taut, engrossing tale about Alpine villagers whose decision to tempt fate ends in disaster. Ignoring the pleas of their elders, some young men take their flocks to summer in an upland mountain pasture that is reputed locally to be a cursed place. It turns out that the reputation is well earned.
The Beatles are widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history and their career has been the subject of many biographies. Yet the band's historical significance has not received sustained academic treatment to date. In The Beatles and the 1960s, Kenneth L. Campbell uses The…
Currently a full professor at Loyola University, he entered college at 16, studying chemistry, economics, and literature. He did graduate work in German, Russian, and Philosophy, held a double fellowship in music and literature, and wrote his dissertation on the relationship between historiography and epic poetry. In 2001, his 10th book, The Myth of the Great War was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in history.
Even though Italy was one of the “victors,” its participation on the allied side was the cause of the government’s collapse, and the rise Mussolini and the fascisti, with all the calamities that followed. This book provides a truly horrifying explanation of why that was so.
In May 1915, Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire. Nearly 750,000 Italian troops were killed in savage, hopeless fighting on the stony hills north of Trieste and in the snows of the Dolomites. To maintain discipline, General Luigi Cadorna restored the Roman practice of decimation, executing random members of units that retreated or rebelled. With elegance and pathos, historian Mark Thompson relates the saga of the Italian front, the nationalist frenzy and political intrigues that preceded the conflict, and the towering personalities of the statesmen, generals, and writers drawn into the heart of the chaos. A work of epic…
I was born in the world’s most isolated capital city – Perth, Western Australia. Ever since my family packed up and drove across the vast Nullarbor Plain to relocate to South Australia, I’ve been fascinated by our eerie, wide-open spaces. There’s no doubt that family folklore fed into this. My Finnish mother arrived as a ten-year-old, recalling that when she first felt the heat, she thought: “This is hell.” My father and his family arrived from the Netherlands. I love my country, but this continent presents dangers in its arid isolation – all captivating to a storyteller.
This book has a spellbinding setting and twisting plot that I adored. It’s set inside a luxury lodge in the Alps, cut off by snow. I love snow books and movies—being Australian, it’s so foreign to me, and it’s ideal for the locked room trope.
This novel is told via two POVs: one young woman who works at the ski lodge and one who’s on a tech company work retreat. I admired the way Ware crafts two sympathetic yet suspicious characters. There’s so many puzzles to work out and scrumptious red herrings.
This instant New York Times bestseller and “claustrophobic spine-tingler” (People) from Ruth Ware follows a group of employees trapped on a snow-covered mountain.
Getting snowed in at a luxurious, rustic ski chalet high in the French Alps doesn’t sound like the worst problem in the world. Especially when there’s a breathtaking vista, a full-service chef and housekeeper, a cozy fire to keep you warm, and others to keep you company. Unless that company happens to be eight coworkers…each with something to gain, something to lose, and something to hide.
When the cofounder of Snoop, a trendy London-based tech start-up, organizes…
I’ve been a hillwalker and mountaineer since the age of 1 year 10 months – and longer than that, if you consider that my family’s been at it for over 150 years now. For the last 30 years, I’ve been writing walking guidebooks, general books about UK mountains, and articles in walking magazines like Trail, The Great Outdoors, and Lakeland Walker. My Book of the Bivvy on tentless sleepouts has acquired semi-classic status among the wilder sort of outdoor enthusiasts. I care about mountains, and I care about great writing about mountains, all of which is explored in my free weekly newsletter, About Mountains on Substack.
In 1895, Mummery was about 50 years ahead of his time by becoming the first mountaineer to die on an 8000m peak – caught in an avalanche while attempting the Rakhiot Face of Nanga Parbat. Herman Buhl, who made Nanga Parbat's first ascent nearly 60 years later, described Mummery as one of the greatest mountaineers of all time.
Mummery's book – plus Mary's contribution – is the defining account of what's called the Silver Age of Alpine Mountaineering. It is lively, entertaining, and full of the love of high, rocky, and rather dangerous places.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank…
Who was the man who would become Caesar's lieutenant, Brutus' rival, Cleopatra's lover, and Octavian's enemy?
When his stepfather is executed for his involvement in the Catilinarian conspiracy, Mark Antony and his family are disgraced. His adolescence is marked by scandal and mischief, his love affairs are fleeting, and yet,…
I’ve been a hillwalker and mountaineer since the age of 1 year 10 months – and longer than that, if you consider that my family’s been at it for over 150 years now. For the last 30 years, I’ve been writing walking guidebooks, general books about UK mountains, and articles in walking magazines like Trail, The Great Outdoors, and Lakeland Walker. My Book of the Bivvy on tentless sleepouts has acquired semi-classic status among the wilder sort of outdoor enthusiasts. I care about mountains, and I care about great writing about mountains, all of which is explored in my free weekly newsletter, About Mountains on Substack.
If you want to know what it's actually like to bivvy on a ledge high on the Walker Spur in the 1940s with a storm coming in – and if you want to go far beyond that and be carried away by the power of words and share the intoxicated joy of that man on that ledge with the snow down the back of his neck – well, the man is Gaston. And his book is called Étoiles et Tempêtes.
“One of the great climbers of all time . . . who has discovered through the medium of mountains the true perspective of living.” —Sir John Hunt, author of The Conquest of Everest
Known for his lyrical writing and his ability to convey not only the dangers of mountaineering but the pure exaltation of the climb, Gaston Rébuffat is among the most well-known and revered Alpinists of all time. He rose to international prominence in 1950 as one of the four principal stalwarts in the first ascent of Annapurna, the highest mountain climbed at that time. Yet his finest feat…
Iwas an under-employed Scottish poet hillwalker when I met a Himalayan mountaineer in a pub. Due to alcohol and a misunderstanding about the metaphorical nature of Poetry, Mal Duff asked me to join an attempt to climb the legendary 24,000ft Mustagh Tower in the Karakoram. By the time I admitted I had no climbing experience whatsoever and was scared of heights, it was too late. Those Scottish winters’ apprenticeships and following Himalayan expeditions re-shaped my writing life, outlook, and friendships. My books have been shortlisted three times for the Boardman-Tasker Award for outstanding mountaineering literature, for Summit Fever; Kingdoms of Experience (Everest the Unclimbed Ridge); Electric Brae.
I first read this among my father’s books as a child. I believe he had met Smythe in London in the early 30, thus his signed copy of The Valley of Flowers. This is the quintessential book of that era of passionate amateur climbing and exploration, the age of Shipton and Tilman, of highly knowledgeable and deeply eccentric personalities. The writing is lyrical, just this side of purple, earthed by Smythe’s passion for botany, photography, and close observation. In the true sense of amateur, Kanchenjunga is a great adventure expedition in a time that will not come again. This is the book that prompted me to accept an invitation to climb with an expedition on a serious Himalayan mountain with real mountaineers, despite my lack of experience and hardwired dislike of heights. It changed my life. I like to think Smythe would have approved.
'We went to Kangchenjunga in response not to the dictates of science, but in obedience to that indefinable urge men call adventure.'
In 1930, an expedition set out to climb the world's third-highest mountain, Kangchenjunga. As yet unclimbed, a number of attempts had been made on the peak, including two in the previous year. The Kangchenjunga Adventure records Frank Smythe's attempts as part of an international team to reach the summit, how a deadly avalanche, which killed one of the sherpas, brought an end to their climb and how they turned their attentions instead to Jonsong Peak, which offered a…
Iwas an under-employed Scottish poet hillwalker when I met a Himalayan mountaineer in a pub. Due to alcohol and a misunderstanding about the metaphorical nature of Poetry, Mal Duff asked me to join an attempt to climb the legendary 24,000ft Mustagh Tower in the Karakoram. By the time I admitted I had no climbing experience whatsoever and was scared of heights, it was too late. Those Scottish winters’ apprenticeships and following Himalayan expeditions re-shaped my writing life, outlook, and friendships. My books have been shortlisted three times for the Boardman-Tasker Award for outstanding mountaineering literature, for Summit Fever; Kingdoms of Experience (Everest the Unclimbed Ridge); Electric Brae.
The sole novel left by legendary Scottish mountaineer Dougal Haston - prickly, opinionated, striking, not given to self-doubt, probably the finest all-around climber of his day. It has a great opening when an incensed young ambitious climber barrels his motorbike up the winding Loch Lubnaig road on his way to Glencoe, goes on to include a fictional version of his epic on the Eiger when the great American climber1966 John Harlin fell to his death beside him, and Haston helped rescue a stranded group of climbers and after a week-long drama finally summited the North Face. It is raw, emotional (has a classic climber’s love story), philosophical, full of impatience to climb, to live more. After finishing the first draft in Chamonix, Haston went to ski the same avalanche-prone gully where his central character in the book had been avalanched and miraculously survived – Haston did not. I saw him…
When John Dunlop gives Judy Scott a lift to Glencoe on his motorbike, both are surprised when a relationship develops. But for John all passions must be relegated to the demands of the big climb. The focus soon shifts to the Alps where he teams up with the American climber Jack McDonald. Their careful planning goes awry and a major first ascent bid turns into an intense struggle bringing disaster and tragedy. Calculated Risk is a fictional portrayal of the world of mountaineering, of climbing the most demanding routes at a time when climbing was still emerging from its primitive…
A memoir of homecoming by bicycle and how opening our hearts to others enables us to open our hearts to ourselves.
When the 2008 recession hit, 33-year-old Heidi Beierle was single, underemployed, and looking for a way out of her darkness. She returned to school, but her gloom deepened. All…
My fascination with agriculture began in childhood, growing up in the countryside, where traditional farming was the way of life. This early exposure fueled my desire to pursue a career in agricultural engineering at university and continue farming on a larger scale. With years of experience in machinery design and mechanization, I have been inspired to document my journey. Hearing about great pioneers who had innovatively transformed farming through their inventions into a more efficient and enjoyable practice from the Industrial Revolution to the present day deepened my passion for writing on agricultural mechanization. I am so confident you will enjoy these books as much as I enjoyed writing about their innovations.
I love this book because of the author’s choice of words in tracing the genealogy of solutions to age-long diseases ravaging the early man, as well as some habitual practices that could cause disease infestation.
The book explicitly navigated through these practices through the Neolithic ages to the Italian Alps, Bronze-ages, and to the present day Big Pharma conglomerates spending billions of dollars on state-of the art laboratories well equipped with knowledgeable personnel to discover blockbuster drugs.
The title of the book is so catchy and fact-filled, providing narrative history of solution to human health challenges. The author infuses the book with so much expertise in finding solutions to life-threatening situations.
"A must-read for a 'behind the scenes' look at new drug development.” —Madelyn Fernstrom, PhD, NBC News Health Editor. The surprising, behind-the-scenes story of how our medicines are discovered, told by a veteran drug hunter.
The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity— by chewing, brewing, and snorting—some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances.
Ötzi the Iceman, the five-thousand-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze-age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus,…
