Once we thought monsters lived there. In the Enlightenment we scaled them to commune with the sublime. Soon, we were racing to conquer their summits in the name of national pride. In this ground-breaking, classic work, reissued in paperback for its 20th anniversary, Robert Macfarlane takes us up into the mountains: to experience their shattering beauty, the fear and risk of adventure, and to explore the strange impulses that have for centuries lead us to the world's highest places.
Robert MacFarlane was born in Nottinghamshire in 1976. He is the author of Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways and Landmarks. Mountains of the Mind won the Guardian First Book Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. The Wild Places won the Boardman-Tasker Award and the Sundial Scottish Arts Council Non-fiction Award. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and writes on environmentalism, literature and travel for publications including the Guardian, the Sunday Times and The New York Times.
"A gripping history of man's irresistible and sometimes fatal attraction to big hills"
– Sunday Times
"A marvellous, distinguished book that jolted my heart [...] It simply fizzes with insights into the sublime madness of mountaineering"
– Roger Deakin
"A truly inspiring read"
– Sir Ranulph Fiennes
"Of all the books published to mark the 50th anniversary of climbing Mount Everest, Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind stands out as by far one of the most intelligent and interesting."
– The Economist