Sacred Mountains of the World

From the Andes to the Himalayas, mountains have an extraordinary power to evoke a sense of the sacred. In the overwhelming wonder and awe that these dramatic features of the landscape awaken, people experience something of deeper significance that imbues their lives with meaning and vitality. Drawing on his extensive research and personal experience as a scholar and climber, Edwin Bernbaum's Sacred Mountains of the World takes the reader on a fascinating journey exploring the role of mountains in the mythologies, religions, history, literature, and art of cultures around the world. Bernbaum delves into the spiritual dimensions of mountaineering and the implications of sacred mountains for environmental and cultural preservation. This beautifully written, evocative book shows how the contemplation of sacred mountains can transform everyday life, even in cities far from the peaks themselves. Thoroughly revised and updated, this new edition considers additional sacred mountains, as well as the impacts of climate change on the sacredness of mountains.

Edwin Bernbaum is a mountaineer and scholar of comparative religion and mythology whose work focuses on the relationship between culture and nature. The first edition of Sacred Mountains of the World won the Commonwealth Club of California's gold medal for nonfiction and the Giuseppe Mazzotti Special Jury Prize in Italy for literature of mountains, exploration and ecology, as well as being shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountaineering Literature in the United Kingdom. His book The Way to Shambhala on Tibetan myths and legends of sacred hidden valleys was originally published by Anchor Doubleday in 1980. He holds an A.B. from Harvard College and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.