Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6042 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-13
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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

The Times
'An erudite and fascinating journey...'

Sunday Telegraph
`This is a book which comes very much from the heart, and is informed throughout by Macfarlane's own passion...'

Customer Reviews

A passion shared
...is not a passion halved in this case. I, like MacFarlane, am a bloke slightly obsessed with mountains and he took me back to some good memories of climbs that I will probably never attempt again. It was with open-eyed exhilaration that I read this book. Splendid reading, even for those who like level terra firma.

Fantastic prose!
I have tended to read books of the mountains when skiing each year and this book was fantastic in its ability to explain why we take risks and why people climb mountains. It was great to read then go up into the mountains and it gave me a completely different appreciation of where I was. Bravo!

If you love mountains you must read this.
I don't feel qualified to review this following the universally excellent comments it has justly received. However, I must say that it is one of the few books that I return to to read passages from time and time again. It is a fantastic book and for Lake District lovers, a must read.