Mount Everest: 1938, by H. W. Tilman. 8vo., 160 pp., 48 illustrations and 4 maps. New York, 1948: The Macmillan Co. Price, $3.75. The great record of the 1924 Everest Expedition tends so to dwarf the accomplishments of subsequent parties that to reach any point short of the summit has come, most unfairly, to be considered failure. But to reach 27,000 feet on any mountain, not once but twice, and to bring back a party unhurt, is a good piece of work, which Mr. Tilman reports with modesty and humor. There are now ten books about seven expeditions to Everest, each quite different, constituting an extraordinary account of an immense struggle between man and nature.

I always enjoy Mr. Tilman’s style. He uses a dry wit with skill and restraint, and he inserts with precision and appropriateness a great number of quotations from a wide variety of sources. Though he shrinks from drama and suspense, there is nevertheless a continuing interest in the story he unfolds, even though the old Everest reader may know every step of the route described.

Much of this small volume is devoted to the issue of small versus large expeditions, a theme dear to the author’s heart. Though in sympathy with the principle of small, lightly equipped parties, I can say from personal experience that Mr. Tilman sometimes carries “bagging and scrapping” too far. I should also question his denial (on page 18) that he enjoys living on mushrooms, bamboo shoots and fresh air: he has been heard to condemn a simple sugar candy as being “all chemicals,” and one wonders that he consents to breathe even the thin air of Camp Seven, made up as it is of fundamental chemicals.

Some of the author’s remarks are so pointed, his jibes so accurate, that one is relieved to know that his companions have remained his friends; some of his scapegoats are given a chance at rebuttal in the several appendices. The ten years intervening between the climb and the report have not resolved any of the major issues raised in this and other Everest accounts, nor are these issues likely to be settled for some time to come. We do know now that man can live for some time at 29,000 feet, but we do not know how much he can do while there. If standing on the summit were the sole objective of an Everest expedition, we know that a man could be dropped there from a plane (probably after some casualties), and airborne supply is much more feasible now than ten years ago. Oxygen equipment, too, is cheaper and lighter. Many climbers of today would agree with Mr. Tilman that the small party is more effective and more fun than the large one; fewer would be able to draw his sharp line between those aids which are permissible (boots, axes, stoves) and those which are not (oxygen, planes).

The day-by-day story of the climb, rather than any new information, makes this book an engrossing, well-written, and important portion of the growing saga of Everest.

Charles S. Houston