The best mountaineering books 📚

Without Annapurna, I would have never climbed a mountain. It not only inspired my childhood but all the mountaineers who followed in author Maurice Herzog’s footsteps. Herzog was also a captain of the 27th BCA during World War II, the mountain battalion where I served as a Special Forces Mountain Commando in the 1980s—but that’s not why I picked this book. I can’t think of a better way to describe it than to quote my own memoir, I, Tarzan: Against All Odds:

“It was a time before the modern mountaineering climbs masterfully described by Jon Krakauer and… show more.

Probably the funniest and most inventive climbing expedition book ever written, loved by climbers who appreciate its satire, spoof, mickey-taking pastiche of Serious Mountaineering Expedition Books. It is Chris Bonnington turned Wodehouse, Jon Krakauer rendered by Spike Milligan. Its knowing self-mockery of all the tropes and self-important delusions of Climbing is sharp and accurate enough to raise it high above whimsy. Wildly creative, it is impossible to read without snorting in one’s sleeping bag. It is the comic, ridiculous side of the great pursuit of Getting Higher.