World Mountaineering: The World's Great Mountains by the World's Great Mountaineers

My title not withstanding, this is a wonderful "picture" book of 52 of the world's climbing peaks. Each climb is accompanied by history, routes, seasonality information and brief gear requirments. Additionally, each individual route is graded with one of the prevailing rating systems and various sundry information about approaches, access, etc. What this book is not, is a technique manual, a gear guide or a conditioning text. It's essentially a coffee table book about great climbing for climbers and has some of the most arresting (pun intended) photos in climbing literature. No, it's not an essential like "Freedom of the Hills" or "The Mountaineer's Handbook", but if you want to get motivated to tackle something most of us will never get a chance to, or if you want to compare the releative difficulties of K2 and Aconcagua, you gotta get this book. There are only a few big wall climbs included as most of the material is devoted to the classic big mountains including the Eiger, Matterhorn and Everest. While this book may not get you up and over the top on any climb, it will satisfy the internal hunger for information about the sport and why we do it and lead to a re-comittment to the ethos. Highly recommended.

Very good book on a variety of tempting targets that will take any climber at least one lifetime. The most recent information on routes, accesibility etc. makes it very valuable. World famous climbers' stories about their climbs is a eal extra. Five stars!

This will be an absorbing read if, like me, Jon Krauker's "Into Thin Air" awakened the nascent armchair mountaineer in you. Interleaving some great photography with brief accounts of various climbs, and summaries of the main routes on mountains across the world, it's well worth a look even if (perhaps, especially if!) the thought of actually climbing a major peak isn't your idea of a fun way to risk your life.