Kingdom of Adventure: Mount Everest

Kingdom of Adventure is the story of the dramatic struggle to conquer Mount Everest, on the remote boundary between India and Tibet — the last truly great exploratory challenge remaining on earth. Seven British expeditions have unsuccessfully assaulted 29,000-foot Everest during the last twenty-five years. Twice aircraft have flown over its windswept peak. It has been mapped, photographed, and thoroughly explored. Yet, curiously enough, very few Americans seem to know the slightest detail about this great story of adventure.

In writing this book the author has done an unusually fine job. Instead of attempting to rewrite, paraphrase, and edit a whole library of volumes on Everest, lie lias let the climbers tell their own story. It is easy to see in reading Kingdom of Adventure that Mr. Ullman has read every syllable of the Everest saga. But this is not all. Being romantically inclined, an able writer, and something of a mountaineer himself, he has made a masterful selection of the excerpts from which his tale has been woven. He has tactfully minimized his own comments in such a manner that they contribute in an interesting and useful way to the continuity of the narrative.

The only feature in which this new book falls far short of its predecessors is in the reproduction of its pictures. The author has collected the best series of Everest pictures ever before bound between two covers, and his publisher has miserably let him down.

For many years Everest was believed to be a relatively easy climb, the only great obstacles to surmount being tremendous altitude and unpredictable Tibetan polities. The expeditions made just before flic recent war have shown this common belief to be a serious misconception. The final thousand feet of Everest are unfortunately the steepest and most treacherous on the whole route up the mountain. Continual high winds, sudden storms, intense cold, and overpowering weariness must all be reckoned with and overcome before the summit is eventually won.

The seasoned mountaineer and the average layman alike are bound to enjoy this hook. In the iormer it will reawaken the thrill of epic adventure on the world s greatest heights. For the latter it will mean an introduction to Everest through one of the most enjoyable books yet written on the subject.

BRADFORD WASHBURN