Books in Brief — 2021
By David Stevenson
There and Back: Photographs from the Edge (Ten Speed Press, $50) collects a “best of ” compilation of climber Jimmy Chin’s (of Meru and Free Solo fame) spectacular photographs. Patrick Dean’s Window to Heaven: The Daring First Ascent of Denali, America’s Wildest Peak (Pegasus Books, $27.95) tells the unlikely story of the first ascent of Denali led by the Episcopal minister Hudson Stuck. Vanessa O’Brien’s The Greatest Heights: Facing Danger, Finding Humility, and Climbing a Mountain of Truth (Atria/Emily Bestler Books, $27) tells the story of a wealthy client’s success on guided 8,000-meter peaks, including becoming the first American woman to summit K2. Best known to readers as a climber, Rick Ridgeway’s Life Lived Wild: Adventures at the Edge of the Map (Patagonia Books, $30) expands the reader’s view to see the author as explorer, conservationist, friend, and family man. Structured Chaos: The Unusual Life of a Climber (Vertebrate Press, £14.95) is past Boardman Tasker winner Victor Saunders’s third volume of memoirs. Kangchenjunga: The Himalayan Giant (Vertebrate Press, £24), finished just before Doug Scott passed away, describes the 1979 second ascent, alpine-style, of the sacred mountain Kangchenjunga.