Climbing Memoir

In May of 1963, Seattle mountaineer Jim Whittaker stepped into world history by becoming the first American to summit Mount Everest. More than 50 years later, he is still regarded as a seminal figure in North American mountaineering, as well as an astute businessman who helped create the outdoor recreation industry. A Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond is Jim's courageous, no-punches-pulled autobiography and a look at a peripatetic, sometimes difficult life.

The Climb is a true, gripping, and thought-provoking account of the worst disaster in the history of Mt. Everest: On May 10, 1996, two commercial expeditions headed by experienced leaders attempted to climb the highest mountain in the world, but things went terribly wrong...

In May 1996, three expeditions attempted to climb Mount Everest on the Southeast Ridge route pioneered by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Crowded conditions slowed their progress. Late in the day twenty-three men and women—including expedition leaders Scott Fischer and Rob Hall—were caught in a ferocious blizzard.

A searching, uplifting memoir by the celebrated, groundbreaking climber: a journey of overcoming where the mountain’s highest peaks can only be reached by traversing the dark crevasses of the soul At twenty-seven, when Melissa Arnot Reid accepted a tank of oxygen just short of the summit of...

Ron Fawcett is a natural-born climber. In 1969, while still at school in his native Yorkshire, he tied into a climbing rope for the first time and was instantly hooked. From that moment on, it seemed nothing else in his life mattered nearly as much as his next vertical fix... Fawcett found the pressures of the limelight too much to bear, and at the end of the 1980s he faded from view. Now, for the first time, he tells his extraordinary story, of how his love of nature and the outdoors developed into a passion for climbing that took him to the top - and almost consumed him.

The bestselling author of No Shortcuts to the Top and K2 chronicles his three attempts to climb the world's tenth-highest and statistically deadliest peak, Annapurna in the Himalaya, while exploring the dramatic and tragic history of others who have made -- or attempted – the ascent, and what...

Jeff takes the listener on powerfully engaging adventures to some of the most uncertain and challenging landscapes on the planet. From guiding a blind man to the summit of Mount Everest to leading a trauma team on the front lines of the war in Mosul, Jeff has lived an extraordinary life wrought with chaotic moments and complex environments.

What compels mountain climbers to take the risks that they do? Is it the thrill in the physical accomplishment, in managing to defy the odds, or both - and why do they continue to do what they do in the face of such great danger? In On the Ridge Between Life and Death, David Roberts confronts these questions head-on as he recounts the exhilarating highs and desperate lows of his climbing career.

This gripping account of courage, achievement, and heartbreaking loss tells the story of Bonington's Boys, a band of climbers who reinvented mountaineering during the three decades after Everest's first ascent. The boyish, fanatically driven Chris Bonington's inner circle included a dozen of the most renowned climbers, who took increasingly terrible risks on now legendary expeditions to the world's most fearsome peaks, and paid an enormous price. Most of them died in the mountains, leaving behind the hardest question of all: Was it worth it?

Sparkling with suspense and vulnerability, Tap Dancing on Everest is a true survival story about the risks we take to become our most authentic selves. In this inspiring coming-of-age travel memoir that includes solo hiking through Nepal, Zieman weaves her childhood as the daughter of Jewish immigrants raised in 1970's New York City, her father a Holocaust survivor, with adventure, medicine, and empowerment. She captures the curiosity and awe of a young woman as she faces down messages to stay small and safe and ventures into the unknown.

In this riveting memoir, renowned mountaineer Lou Dawson shares a tumultuous coming-of-age journey, from the flatlands of Texas to the Colorado mountains, steeped in the counterculture revolution of the 1960s. Amidst the towering peaks, Lou discovers an enduring love for alpine sports: rock climbing, topping summits, skiing powder snow. However, as the avalanches fall and lifestyle choices veer, his pursuit of adrenaline becomes a poignant struggle for meaning in a culture where nothing succeeds like excess.

This is the story of a courageous young woman who grew up in a home headed by a sexual predator and an abused mother who lost her mind when Christine was only 14, disappearing until she was a mother herself. It recounts the secrets and lies that were designed to protect the darkest family secret of all, which had the effect of making the eight children strangers to each other, and then prisoners of the passions that disordered their lives, and set them against each other. Christine's story is filled with intense dramas and the saga of Christine's climb out of the family wreck.

Climbing the Rough Side of the Mountain is the remarkable story of a couple who came together during the Civil Rights Movement and made fighting for equality and civil and workers’ rights their purpose for more than sixty years, overcoming adversity—with the strength of their love and commitment—to bring about meaningful change.

Growing up in image-conscious Miami, Laura, with her double chins, frizzy hair, and in the inability to squeeze into "regular" sized clothing, was an embarrassment to her beguiling, jet-setting mother and prominent, successful father. She climbed out of shame by focusing on brains rather than beauty, becoming a child entrepreneur, and rising all the way to the top ranks of business.

"Climbing and Falling" by Karen Kieltyka takes listeners on a poignant and uplifting exploration of the author's life, marked by challenges, resilience, and unwavering support from loved ones. It is a beautiful story that transcends the boundaries of a mere memoir, evolving into a powerful testament to the human spirit's capacity to fight against life's challenges.