Wade Davis’s monumental history of the British Everest expeditions of the 1920s — and the World War I trauma that drove them. The climbers who went to Everest were survivors of the trenches. The mountain was where they went to feel something other than horror. It’s the definitive book on early Everest and will open your eyes to the traumatic context that frames their efforts.
Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest