The Book of the Mountains; Being a Collection of Writings About the Mountains in All Their Aspects; With 64 Pages of Illustrations in Halftone and Gravure, and Many Line Drawings

1955. (Hardcover) Very good plus, no dust jacket. 492pp. Illustrations, photographs. A previous owner's name in pencil inside. "Currently, there has been an effusion of writing about the conquest of heretofore impregnable peaks. Conquest is an odd word used thus: Months and years of planning, weeks and months of desperate and perilous toil are invested in a brief moment when perhaps two men, swaddled, numb, gasping like stranded fish, triumphantly stand with their heads some six feet higher than the hoary peak of a mountain" - from the Preface. (Natural History, Adventure and Adventurers, Anecdotes, Mountain Climbing, Mountains, Natural History, Nature in Literature, Travel and Adventure).