The Mountains of My Life (Modern Library Exploration)

Published for the first time in English, The Mountains of My Life collects the classic writings of world-famous mountaineer Walter Bonatti, and tells the real story of the 1954 controversy over the events on K2 that changed his life.

Bonatti is one of the greatest mountaineers of all time, a man who continually reset the benchmark of human possibility by ascending routes that others dared not even contemplate. He climbed with an audacity and panache that epitomized the purest spirit of alpinism, and inspired an entire generation of climbers. Jon Krakauer calls him one of my heroes. He is not only a mountaineer of astonishing talent and vision, but one of the world's most engaging writers about mountaineering.

Bonatti has also been dogged by controversy and often been at odds with the climbing community. The Mountains of My Life not only collects the best of Bonatti's writing telling of adventures in the Alps, the Himalayas, and little-known South American peaks it also tells Bonatti's version of what really happened on the Italian expedition that made the first ascent of K2 in 1954. Bonatti's selfless actions helped avert disaster, yet in the expedition's aftermath he found himself cast as a scapegoat. Part detective story, part hair-raising adventure, part meditation on his craft, The Mountains of My Life is as awe-inspiring and controversial as its author, and is beautifully illustrated with Bonatti's own photos.

Walter Bonatti was born in Bergamo, Italy, in 1930. A well-known photographer and the author of over a dozen books on climbing, he received the French Legion d'Honneur for his heroic rescue of two fellow climbers on an expedition in which four others perished. He lives in Italy.