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Into the Silence The Great War Mallory and the Conquest of Everest Wade Davis 9780676979190 Books

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Into the Silence The Great War Mallory and the Conquest of Everest Wade Davis 9780676979190 Books

This outstanding and exhaustively researched book describes the experience of participating in the First World War, the impact of that on men and their lives, and how some of those men subsequently embarked on expeditions to find a route to Everest (and possibly reach its summit). It has a remarkable structure for a mountaineering narrative, and this may be too lengthy for anyone looking simply for an epic tale, but I found the book captivating, enchanting even. It told me about other English men in other times, with such a richness of descriptive detail that it continually gave me better perspective on my own generation (born after the Second World War) and my own times. And although I have read many books about Himalayan climbing, it taught me for the first time about the scale and grandeur, and the formidable challenge, of those mountains at the time when exploration was incomplete and mountaineering equipment was rudimentary. It also taught me something about the customs and religion of the people who inhabit those mountains, and particularly about their animistic perceptions of the mountains and their spiritual significance, a rich and educational experience and a wonderful preparation for my Annapurna trek shortly after reading the book. The author should be applauded for his extraordinary industry in researching and succinctly describing the Great War, the history of British imperial involvement in Himalayan states, the post-war climbing scene in Britain, and even the botanical richness of the mountains. It all makes for a terrific book!


Tags : Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest [Wade Davis] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. A magnificent work of history, biography and adventure. If the quest for Mount Everest began as a grand imperial gesture,Wade Davis,Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest,Knopf Canada,067697919X,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Adventurers & Explorers,HISTORY Europe Great Britain General

Into the Silence The Great War Mallory and the Conquest of Everest Wade Davis 9780676979190 Books Reviews

First -- the good
The book is really several books in one
1. A remarkable account of WWl. Some of the most heart wrenching (and graphic) descriptions of the carnage I have ever read. It was shocking and hard to read at times -- and I have read a lot of books about WWl and WWll.

2. A lucid account of "The Great Game." It covered the high points and characters without going into obsessive detail,

3. A history of the major climbers and climbs of the early 20th C., and how this tied in with WWl. The author pays particular attention to how the War affected the psyche of the nation and the climbers.

Into this mix he has astonishing and beautiful descriptions of the search for Everest, the people and their customs, and how (surprising to me) difficult it was to find a way to it.

Now for the slightly problematic elements;
As other reviewers have said, the author does go into astonishing details throughout, and especially so in the search for the mountain itself. Depending upon how much you are interested in this, it is either a strength or a weakness. Also, no matter how interested you are, it is difficult to follow the Tibet/Nepal section without a decent map. The two maps at the back of the book are utterly useless. And that is a damn shame.

This is really the only fault, for me. I liked the detail -- but decent maps would have taken the story to another level. That is an unfortunate feature of just about all books though and not specific to this one. tried to remedy this with the "magnifying" feature, but it isn't adequately implemented in this or many books to really matter much.
As an historian, an avid reader, and a novice armchair mountaineer, this is far an away one of the finest books I've ever read.
Davis's sourcing is meticulous and flawless. His insights are well-founded and as unbiased as it gets in this kind of work.
He gives us a genuine and unvarnished account of the three British expeditions to Mt. Everest beginning in 1921 and up through the tragic finale in 1924, and an equally honest understanding of and appreciation for the men on those expeditions, not the least of them George Leigh Mallory.
His descriptions of WWI and the Battle of the Somme in particular, are harrowing and provide as complete and traumatizing an understanding as anyone can get without having lived through those horrors. He then paints a vivid picture of the men's quest to seek — sadly in vain — some relief and catharsis for themselves and their country by taking on the king of mountains.
I read it on my , but I will have a copy of this on my bookshelf and I know this is undoubtedly only the first of many readings I'll give it.
For those who love to read about these adventures, his bibliography is in and of itself a gift to us all.
Wade Davis wrote a masterpiece with "Into the Silence."
Wade Davis researched this book extensively in the process of writing it. The book deals with the British efforts to conquer Mount Everest in the early 1920's. The political situations of the day made it necessary that Everest should be attacked from the northern (Tibetan) side and not the southern (Nepalese) side. Beyond the fact that the Tibetan side presents the more difficult approaches, the logistics of the effort were staggering. British provisioning efforts were "off the map" covering territory that had not been mapped. The expeditions included cartographers to correct this. The mountain climbing technology of the 1920's was, by today's standards, rudimentary. Equipment was overweight and unreliable. The English saw Everest as the "third pole". They had been beaten to the North Pole and to the South Pole, so they desperately wanted to be the first to the top of the world. They mounted three expeditions to Everest, the last in 1924. It is possible that their climbers actually made it to the top. No one knows for sure. Their climbers never made it back alive. This is an excellent book. It details a flawed selection process for climbers that depended largely on social and political aspects unrelated to climbing ability. This process probably operated to the detriment of the effort. The same process was implicated in an assessment of Robert Scott's polar expedition that I once read. Overall I recommend this book highly. It is a long book and it is exceptionally well detailed. It is a worthwhile read.
This outstanding and exhaustively researched book describes the experience of participating in the First World War, the impact of that on men and their lives, and how some of those men subsequently embarked on expeditions to find a route to Everest (and possibly reach its summit). It has a remarkable structure for a mountaineering narrative, and this may be too lengthy for anyone looking simply for an epic tale, but I found the book captivating, enchanting even. It told me about other English men in other times, with such a richness of descriptive detail that it continually gave me better perspective on my own generation (born after the Second World War) and my own times. And although I have read many books about Himalayan climbing, it taught me for the first time about the scale and grandeur, and the formidable challenge, of those mountains at the time when exploration was incomplete and mountaineering equipment was rudimentary. It also taught me something about the customs and religion of the people who inhabit those mountains, and particularly about their animistic perceptions of the mountains and their spiritual significance, a rich and educational experience and a wonderful preparation for my Annapurna trek shortly after reading the book. The author should be applauded for his extraordinary industry in researching and succinctly describing the Great War, the history of British imperial involvement in Himalayan states, the post-war climbing scene in Britain, and even the botanical richness of the mountains. It all makes for a terrific book!