Sivalaya, by Louis Baume. Reading: Gastons-West Col Publications, 1978. 316 pages, 30 sketches and maps. Price £12.

Not everyone will appreciate this book, but for the next several years it will remain the definitive work on the history of the 8000-meter peaks. Louis Baume has utilized his life-long love of these summits and man’s ventures on them to write a work that is an important contribution to mountaineering literature. This tome will be cherished by those who share his infatuation with the Himalaya.

The book is divided into three parts—a general history of the Himalaya and Karakoram; the individual sketch of each 8000-meter peak; and an extremely useful bibliography of the works on these mountains. The first part will interest all readers but is not sufficiently unique to make one buy the book. The second and third parts may bore the casual reader because space limitations prevented Baume from recreating more than a hint of the dramas that were enacted by the expeditions he chronicles and there are no photographs of the peaks, only some very fine drawings by Mario Alfonsi. For the cognoscenti, however, these chronicles are gems, well worth the purchase price, and are essential for the library of anyone with serious aspirations on these summits. First, the chronicles are complete and contain very few errors. The only omission I noticed was lack of reference to the 1964 Chinese-Pakistani treaty that fixed the border in the Baltoro region along the divide formed by the four 8000-meter peaks. Secondly, Baume has done an excellent job in enumerating maps and expedition accounts, identifying the most useful of these, and reconciling the multitudinous inconsistencies in names, descriptions, and altitudes that are a real barrier to digesting critically this literature. As I read the book, I became aware of what a formidable task this must have been and what a high proportion of Himalayan mountaineers have contributed inaccuracies to the literature.

Anyone who has visited these regions will certainly find these accounts extremely interesting; those with mountaineering libraries will value the bibliography; alpinists who climb there will share these sentiments, but will also, I suspect, wish that Baume some day share more of his notes and publish a book much longer with photographs as useful as his text. In summary, it is an interesting and helpful guide to the lands and literature of the high Himalaya, also the abode of Siva.

Louis F. Reichardt