Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination

Many works have been published on mountaineering and exploration, but far fewer analysing our obsession with them. We usually get insights into and reflections on this fascination in the writings of the climbers themselves, like Simpson (2002) whose book resonates in the memory, or meditations on the wider attractions of wilderness and dangerous places such as Lopez (1986). Some achieve both, like Peter Fleming in News from Tartary, Sara Wheeler in Travels in a Thin Country, and Nicholas Crane's Clear Waters Rising. Often we get a mixture of the exterior adventure and the interior journey, as...