Jon Krakauer begins his account of the Everest disaster of 1996, in which eight climbers died, with a list of the people he knew to be on the mountain at the time; sixteen separate expeditions, comprising an astonishing 140 souls. If peace and quiet is what you're after, Everest is obviously not the place to go. In fact you might conclude, from the opening chapters of Krakauer's delightfully gossipy book, that the magnificent mountain has been thoroughly tamed, since it appears to be both polluted and overcrowded, with commercial operators prepared to escort pretty much anybody to the summit so long as they fork out $65,000 for the privilege. As the weather worsens and the tragedy deepens, however, it becomes clear that, almost a half-century after it was "conquered" by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, Everest remains a force to be reckoned with. A vivid and harrowing book.
Arminta Wallace