Any insider in the mountaineering world will love this book. It is written by physicist (Hartemann) and an information media specialist (Hauptman) who are also active mountaineers: they know many of the peaks included and they know the business of climbing. As a result, the encyclopedia has a rough‐hewn authority about it, a love of heroic achievement, and more than a bibliographer's love for (and critical eye for) major figures (like Messner and Harrer, Boukreev and Tenzing) and writers on mountaineering. This will go directly into any self‐respecting reference and personal collection on the subject, and will sell well as a present through the many specialist and general retail outlets (the major exemplars are mentioned in the book). Likely to delight are about 100 pages of colour photographs (of peaks, fauna, dawns, volcanoes, climbers, maps, and paintings) some small, some homespun, but all deeply evocative of the compelling attractions and memories of mountaineering. There are many line drawings, too, of peaks and climbs.
Any mention of Annapurna and K2, the North Face of the Eiger and El Capitan, let alone Everest, will instantly evoke the high points, literally and imaginatively, about mountaineering. Accounts by writers like Krakauer and Bonington, Haston and Terray, Venables and Cherry‐Garrard, Breashears and Herzog expand and deepen and sadden our knowledge of these high moments of achievement. The world is the poorer for the loss of Hargreaves and Rob Hall and Doug Scott, but lifted up by the survival of Shackleton and Simpson and fascinated by the mystery of Irvine. The encyclopedia is strong on both climbers and peaks, an “encyclopedic” reference book about Altitude Records and The Most Difficult Seven Summits, Everest Facts and The Fourteen 8,000‐Metre Peaks which include Kangchenjunga and Makalu, Dhaulagiri and Nanga Parbat, climbs which resonate in the literature and continue to provoke fierce discussions about routes, successes and failures. Sidebars and appendices present facts in abundance for the aficionado such as highest peaks in the Alps and the Andes, highest volcanoes and unclimbed peaks. An appendix of relevant websites is a portal of particular value.
Coverage of major peaks and climbs is authoritative and well chosen – from Everest to Mt Cook, Mt Hood to the Matterhorn, the Aiguille Verte and Denali to the Jungfrau and Chimborazo. Entries by country and region, such as British Columbia and Colorado, Nepal and Spitsbergen and New Zealand, allow searches from other directions. Many peak entries refer to key climbs (like Messner's reprise of Shackleton's crossing of South Georgia or Harrer's success on the Eiger, of “The White Spider” fame). A full entry on Mont Blanc opens up the kind of historical perspective so richly explored by Fergus Fleming in works like Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the Alps. Linked with these are entries on the weather, geology and meteorology (such as moraines and logging, national parks and tectonic plates, volcanic activity and slab avalanches). This is the level of detail, and the approach to detail, that confirms the authors as insiders and not merely compilers. Climbing itself is exhaustively covered (Alpine style, descent by rappel, friction climbing, traverse and self‐arrest, rating systems and frostbite and fixed rope), supplemented by skiing and snowboarding. The ethical implications (national parks, “leave no trace”, pitons on popular slopes, litter and pay‐guide climbs on Everest) are all there.
Perhaps because of the authors' enthusiasm as well as Hauptman's own expertise in bibliography, the bibliographic side of this encyclopedia is strong, with an expertly‐chosen bibliography, full citations under many authors, photographers, and climbers (such as Buhl and Poucher, Styles and Rébuffat, Griffin and Coolidge, Engel and Unsworth, the last of whom compiled a memorable Encyclopedia of Mountaineering in 1975, published at the time by St Martin's Press of New York). There are also entries on “periodicals”, which point on to clubs like The Alpine Club, The American Alpine Club, as well as highlighting current magazines like High Mountain Sports and Vertical Roc, likely to be in any specialist collection. Classics like Simpson's Touching the Void, in book and film, and works by Boardman and Tasker (but not the impressive Boardman‐Tasker prize list for mountaineering books, which can be inspected on the trust website at www.boardmantasker.com) are also included. Then out from mainstream mountaineering to associated subjects like film and mountains, with extensive coverage, and music and mountains, with entries like Mussorgsky to Messaien.
Summing up, one of those reference works which you know at a glance whether you want and need it for library and personal use. Whichever, value for money. Internet alternatives, like the Peakware World Mountain Encyclopedia (www.peakwise.com) are worth comparing.
