A convincing book of historical evidence alongside his own oxygen-deprived experiences in an attempt to answer the age old question, ‘Why climb the mountain?’"– San Francisco Chronicle

Why do people climb mountains despite the obvious danger to their life and limb? This book attempts to answer that question. I thought of the resistless passion which drives men to undertake terrific scrambles. No example can deter them . . . a peak can exercise the same irresistible power of attraction as an abyss." Of course the significant difference between de Saussure's chamois hunter and me was that for the hunter, risk wasn't optional - it came with the job. I sought risk out, however. I courted it. In fact, I paid for it. This is the great shift which has taken place in the history of risk. Risk has always been taken, but for a long time it was taken with some ulterior purpose in mind: scientific advancement, personal glory, financial gain. About two-and-a-half centuries ago, however, fear started to become fashionable for its own sake. Risk, it was realised, brought its own reward: the sense of physical exhilaration and elation which we would now attribute to the effects of adrenaline. And so risk-taking - the deliberate inducement of fear - became desirable: became a commodity. Mountains of the Mind is a tumult of delights all the way. I found it particularly rewarding on early puzzling about the origin of mountains." - Roy Herbert, New Scientist Aquella noche nevó y me quedé tumbado y en vela escuchando el rumor de los gruesos copos en el toldo de la tienda. Se acumulaban y formaban oscuros continentes de sombra en la tela, hasta que su peso se hacía excesivo para la pendiente del toldo y resbalaban hasta el suelo con un suave silbido.”It wasn't, either. It beat a path of sound over the glacier and thumped its way off east, towards the pinnacle of the Zinalrothorn, where somebody else had died. If you have ever wondered why people climb mountains, then here is your answer. Part history, part personal observation, this is a fascinating study of our (sometimes fatal) obsession with height. A brilliant book, beautifully written." And so begins Macfarlane’s mountain adventure. He writes about the forces that make mountains and the glaciers that populate them. There is lot on our perception of them too, the overcoming of the fear that these immense heights can bring, the fixation of getting to the summit of these peaks. These beautiful peaks can be deadly too, the Alps claim one climber a day during the season, and less people die on Scottish roads than they do in the mountains. But those that conquer the peaks are shown the magnificence and beauty of the world beneath their feet.

In his account of the climb, Herzog describes becoming progressively more detached from what was happening to him. The clarity and thinness of the air, the crystalline beauty of the mountains and the strange painlessness of frostbite conspired to send him into a state of numbed serenity, which made him insensitive to his worsening injuries:Macfarlane's "history of the imagination" is resolutely Eurocentric, and little space is granted to the non-Western mind (.....) Mountains of the Mind is, broadly, a cultural history interleaved with autobiographical vignettes (the author's agent told him to "put an 'I' into it"). The latter are nicely handled." - Ian Pindar, Times Literary Supplement This was a hard book to read at the start. I'm a bedtime reader, and there were so many words I had to look up! Partly because of jargon and partly because I'm not as eloquent in English as I might have thought. George Mallory’s body was discovered only in May 1999, seventy-five (75) years after his death and disappearance. His widow would have been long dead by that time and maybe even his children, but the book made no mention of this, just a description of Mallory’s body which had been preserved in ice: I think I haven't been this emotionally compromised by non-fiction since finishing Erebus: The Story of a Ship about the same time last year. I think it helps that I seem to be about as obsessed about landscapes, history, and polar exploration as Robert Macfarlane, and only slightly less about mountains. There was something unusual in the way I saw Lachenal and everything around us. I smiled to myself at the paltriness of our efforts. But all sense of exertion was gone, as though there were no longer any gravity. This diaphanous landscape, this quintessence of purity - these were not the mountains I knew; they were the mountains of my dreams. "

Niet bij dit boek - in dit boek reizen we slechts af en toe mee met MacFarlane - het gaat echt over de geschiedenis van de mensheid en hun relatie tot het gebergte, met de fascinatie voor hoogte en de ultieme offers die worden gebracht om dat ene doel te bereiken. 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. There were books everywhere in the house. My grandfather had not tried to organize them and so very different books found themselves neighbours. On a small shelf in the dining room Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing, The Hobbit and The Fireside. Omnibus of Detective Stories shared space with two leather-bound volumes of J. S. Mill's System of Logic. There were several books about Russia whose titles I did not properly understand, and dozens about exploration and mountaineering. Three centuries ago, no one was interested in mountains and other wild places. The land could not be cultivated, nor was there any point in possessing them and the people who inhabited these heights were considered a lesser human. They were considered no go areas. But in the middle of the Eighteenth century, this perception of the mountain began to change. The premise of the sublime, the balance point of fear and exhilaration that could be achieved when climbing, coupled with the sense that the mountains were much, much older than previously thought, meant that the great thinkers of the age became interested in the how and why they were formed.There are many books on climbing and climbers, and this is one of the best and most unusual I have read.”– The Times (UK) Uncluttered horizons liberate the mind like nothing else and it's no coincidence that the Left in this country should fall on access to the countryside, particularly our wild uplands, with such ardour. Furthermore, we have started to develop an interest in what those who live in the mountains - previously viewed as inarticulate dunderheads - have to say about them. At once a fascinating work of history and a beautifully written mediation on how memory, imagination, and the landscape of mountains are joined together in our minds and under our feet.”– Forbes