Why do so many feel compelled to risk their lives climbing mountains? During the climbing season, one person per day dies in the Alps, and more people die climbing in this season in Scotland than they do on the roads. "Mountains of the Mind" pursues a fascinating investigation into our emotional and imaginative responses to mountains, and how these have changed over the last few centuries. It is rich with historical and literary references, and punctuated by descriptions of the author's own climbing experiences. There are chapters on glaciers, geology, the prusuit of fear, the desire to explore the unknown, and the desire to get to the summit. The book ends with a gripping account of Mallory's attempt on Everest.
Mountains of the Mind
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More About the Author
Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (2003), won the Guardian First Book Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Robert Macfarlane is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He lives in Cambridge with his family.
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Amazon Review
Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind is the most interesting of the crop of books published to mark the 50th anniversary of the first successful ascent of Everest. Macfarlane is both a mountaineer and a scholar. Consequently we get more than just a chronicle of climbs. He interweaves accounts of his own adventurous ascents with those of pioneers such as George Mallory, and in with an erudite discussion of how mountains became such a preoccupation for the modern western imagination.
The book is organised around a series of features of mountaineering--glaciers, summits, unknown ranges--and each chapter explores the scientific, artistic and cultural discoveries and fashions that accompanied exploration. The contributions of assorted geologists, romantic poets, landscape artists, entrepreneurs, gallant amateurs and military cartographers are described with perceptive clarity. The book climaxes with an account of Mallory's fateful ascent on Everest in 1924, one of the most famous instances of an obsessive pursuit. Macfarlane is well-placed to describe it since it is one he shares.
MacFarlane's own stories of perilous treks and assaults in the Alps, the Cairngorms and the Tian Shan mountains between China and Kazakhstan are compelling. Readers who enjoyed Francis Spufford's masterly I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination will enjoy Mountains of the Mind. This is a slighter volume than Spufford's and it loses in depth what it gains in range, but for an insight into the moody, male world of mountaineering past and present it is invaluable. --Miles Taylor
Review
'A seriously good book' -- P.J. Kavanagh, The Spectator
'An imaginative, original essay in cultural history - a book that evokes as well as investigates the fear and wonder of high places' -- William Fiennes
'He is an engaging writer, his commentary, always crisp and relevant, leavened by personal experience beautifully related’ -- Observer
'He writes with tremendous maturity, elegance and control. A powerful debut, a remarkable blend of passion and scholarship’ -- Evening Standard
'The sort of book that restores confidence in the travel genre. Erudite, full of information and charged with passion' -- Robyn Davidson
‘A distinguished book that jolted my heart. Adventurous, passionate, intensely romantic...fizzes with insights into the sublime madness of mountaineering’ -- Roger Deakin
‘An impressive first book’ -- John Carey, Sunday Times
‘Extremely elegant and compelling…a book which comes very much from the heart, and is informed throughout by Macfarlane’s own passion' -- Sunday Telegraph
‘If you have ever wondered why people climb mountains, then here is your answer. A brilliant book,beautifully written’ -- Fergus Fleming
‘Vivid and original...Intelligent without being academic, the writing contains many pleasures, and made me want to be out there again in snow, wind and rain’ -- Andrew Greig
'An imaginative, original essay in cultural history - a book that evokes as well as investigates the fear and wonder of high places' -- William Fiennes
'He is an engaging writer, his commentary, always crisp and relevant, leavened by personal experience beautifully related’ -- Observer
'He writes with tremendous maturity, elegance and control. A powerful debut, a remarkable blend of passion and scholarship’ -- Evening Standard
'The sort of book that restores confidence in the travel genre. Erudite, full of information and charged with passion' -- Robyn Davidson
‘A distinguished book that jolted my heart. Adventurous, passionate, intensely romantic...fizzes with insights into the sublime madness of mountaineering’ -- Roger Deakin
‘An impressive first book’ -- John Carey, Sunday Times
‘Extremely elegant and compelling…a book which comes very much from the heart, and is informed throughout by Macfarlane’s own passion' -- Sunday Telegraph
‘If you have ever wondered why people climb mountains, then here is your answer. A brilliant book,beautifully written’ -- Fergus Fleming
‘Vivid and original...Intelligent without being academic, the writing contains many pleasures, and made me want to be out there again in snow, wind and rain’ -- Andrew Greig
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
93 of 95 people found the following review helpful
By "tomridley1"
Format:Hardcover
I came on line to write an independent review of this brilliant book, but then I saw the review by the reader from Fort William, and it made me rethink what I was going to say. First of all, it's important to say that this is top-class book; a totally new kind of writing about mountains. Second off, it's not just a book about mountains, but about how history works, why people behave the way they do towards different types of landscapes, how we think the world into being, and what issues like guilt, love and betrayal mean when looked at in historical and not just individual terms. in many ways, this is a book of philosophy and poetry, rather than a history of mountaineering, which is perhaps why some people - including the reviewer from Fort William - have been disappointed. It's obvious that Macfarlne isn't a top-drawer climber; he never says that he is in the book, and anyone who knows anything about serious mountaineering could tell he's not. So there's no secret, or misdescription there. The point is, I think, that eveyrone who goes to the mountains goes to them because, in some sense, they love the way they look, and so this book does answer the big WHY question.
This is all a bit jumbled. But, in conclusion: this is a very special book, in the tradition of writers like Bruce Chatwin and Barry Lopez in the way it works simultaneously with adventures and ideas, and in the way it thinks about the wild, physical world. READ IT if you love history, language or, indeed, mountains.
This is all a bit jumbled. But, in conclusion: this is a very special book, in the tradition of writers like Bruce Chatwin and Barry Lopez in the way it works simultaneously with adventures and ideas, and in the way it thinks about the wild, physical world. READ IT if you love history, language or, indeed, mountains.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Every time there is a spectacular death in the hills, the old question starts up a babbling again: WHY DO THEY (mountain climbers) DO IT? The answers lies less in ``because the mountains are there'' -- and more, from the deepest psychological quandaries of ``who am I?''. Adventure jocks rarely talk in such metaphysical and existstential terms -- and clearly a good number of them have no time for MOUNTAIN OF THE MIND which has rightly turned to poetry and philosophy for both the language and cultural parrallels that ultimately humanises mountain mystique. I say humanizes... because the game itself is full of people wjho see themselves as more than human, superhuman, separate from the rabble. This is a terrific book.
The other great book that readers either love or hate becauise of its literary and philosophical references and explorations is Peter Hillary's surprisingly brilliant IN THE GHOST COUNTRY (written with philosopher and poet John Elder). It goes even further than MOUNTAIN OF THE MIND by adopting a powerful and sometimes intimidating language of myth and dreams to articulate powerfully the psychological and emotional frailties and motivations of men driven to the edge. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
The other great book that readers either love or hate becauise of its literary and philosophical references and explorations is Peter Hillary's surprisingly brilliant IN THE GHOST COUNTRY (written with philosopher and poet John Elder). It goes even further than MOUNTAIN OF THE MIND by adopting a powerful and sometimes intimidating language of myth and dreams to articulate powerfully the psychological and emotional frailties and motivations of men driven to the edge. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a work of cultural history, blended with autobiography. It explains our fascination with high places and climbing, from several different perspectives. Thus the love of mountains is seen as a manifestation of specific aesthetic vogues and historical fashions; yet is also viewed from the perspective of the psychologist, probing the motives behind exploration and the somatic and intellectual cravings that mountaineering answers. The genre of the book is intriguing: it combines travelogue, personal history, fiction, narrative non-fiction and cultural studies, together with literary criticism and intellectual history. Yet it’s readable – very well written indeed – and engaging. Macfarlane has travelled widely, but, more than that, he has travelled thoughtfully. He is particularly good at describing the landscape and the facets of stones or the striations of the sky: he understands the responsibility of descriptive language to pay tribute to the things it describes, and there’s a kind of fetishism in his writing – a fascination with, above all, “things”. The epigraph to the book comes from the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Macfarlane shares Hopkins’s sense of “haeccitas” – the understanding of the “thisness” of what he looks at, a response to its immediacy that is expressed in vividly living language. Very highly recommended,
39 of 41 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This IS one of the most absorbing books I have read for a long time. What is it with our fascination with mountains?
Macfarlane traces western man's fascination with mountains, charting the history of mountains and of the men and women who sought to conquer them. The book is worth the cost alone for the description of Mallory's three expeditions to Everest, here portrayed as a love affair that completes take over his life with disastrous consequences.
But this is more than just a history. This is an examination of fascination and obsession, a journey through the mountains of the imagination.
For anyone who walks or climbs in mountains this book is as Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust: a history of walking.
Macfarlane traces western man's fascination with mountains, charting the history of mountains and of the men and women who sought to conquer them. The book is worth the cost alone for the description of Mallory's three expeditions to Everest, here portrayed as a love affair that completes take over his life with disastrous consequences.
But this is more than just a history. This is an examination of fascination and obsession, a journey through the mountains of the imagination.
For anyone who walks or climbs in mountains this book is as Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust: a history of walking.
29 of 31 people found the following review helpful
By Jokerman
VINE VOICE
Format:Hardcover
This stunning, magnificent, elegantly written book is one of the best books I've read this year. Some reviewers are entirely missing the point. Yes, of course it's about mountains and mountaineering - at its basic level. But its real concerns resonate so much more broadly and deeply. It's about history and geology, natural history and philosophy, literature and poetry; and it's about culture and psychology and self-discovery. And ultimately, after a meticulously woven argument bringing all these threads together, it's about tragedy, and about knowledge and about love. As another reviewer acutely observed, Macfarlane, like Hopkins, encounters the particular nature of things, and celebrates it, in language that's enormously potent, imaginative, and wide-ranging in imagery and vocabulary. Yet these writerly techniques never even for one moment get in the way of meaning or accessibility. It's at all times page-turningly readable. And the chapters just get better and better throughout. In short, it's a work of art. I just can't wait for his next book - whatever it's about.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting read for anyone who loves Mountains
A great read, this mixes a history of how Mountains were perceived (from dark, dangerous places frequented by monsters to places of leisure and relaxation) throughout history and a... Read more
Published 1 month ago by M. Saxby
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fabulous
This is a fascinating and interesting insight into mountain climbing and why they do it, I do some mountain climbing myself but not at this level. Read more
Published 1 month ago by J warren
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not quite what I expected
Perhaps I should have paid more attention to other reviews but I thought this would be a factual climbing book about why people climb, but it was more of a history over how we have... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Roger Adams
5.0 out of 5 stars
A moving history of men and mountains
This is an eloquently written book that describes the beauty, spirituality and challenges of climbing in the mountains over the centuries. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Merlin
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dull and plodding
I really can't understand why this book has been given such good reviews. I struggled through to page 73 before giving up. Read more
Published 2 months ago by A. Burlison
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Towards the great and the loftiest peak a fiery longing draws me."...
Robert Macfarlane has a great ability to convey his passions without proselytising, and without ever boring readers who don't feel the same degree of obsession. Read more
Published 3 months ago by James Brydon
4.0 out of 5 stars
nice
a mixture of musings and history of mountains hills and how we perceive them and the need to climb them.very enjoyable read got me wondering if i can afford a trip to nepal
Published 3 months ago by m. dosa
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mountains of the Mind
I found much of this book rather long-winded with the author pounding on the same points over and over again. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Philip J. Vickers
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent read
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, having had it recommended to me by a friend. The author has a true love of mountains and this comes across in the book.
Published 4 months ago by Robert Pearson
5.0 out of 5 stars
a truly inspiring read
this is not jus a book about mountains, MacFarlane covers a broad range of topics, including art, culture and philosophy. a very well informed and beautifully written book. Read more
Published 5 months ago by mouse
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