Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (Landscapes) - Softcover

Macfarlane, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375714065 ISBN 13: 9780375714061

Publisher: Vintage, 2004

Synopsis

From the New York Times bestselling author of Is a River Alive? and Underland, a soaring blend of cultural history, meditation, and memoir about the mysteries of the world’s highest places and our unending quest for the summit

"Wonderfully illuminating.” —Los Angeles Times • “Fascinating.” —The New York Times Book Review

For those who love mountains, their wonder is beyond dispute. But for many, their allure is beyond reason; their extraordinary beauty offset by the immense risks involved in climbing them. In this groundbreaking and now classic work, Robert Macfarlane answers the enduring ‘why’ of mountaineering. He explores how mountains have come to grip the Western imagination and hold so many of us spellbound, drawing us up into the high places—sometimes at the cost of our lives.

Braiding history, geology, human stories, and glittering accounts of his own journeys in high, wild landscapes from the Rockies to the Himalayas, Macfarlane unfurls the mysteries and passions of mountaineering’s imaginative evolution. His account begins in the mid-1700s, when a fascination for mountains was sparked by the work of both poets and scientists in Europe. It ends with a vivid re-creation of George Mallory’s three, ill-fated expeditions in the 1920s, as Mallory sought to be the first to summit Mt. Everest.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Macfarlane is internationally renowned for his writing on nature, people, and place. His bestselling books include Is a River Alive?, Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places, and Mountains of the Mind; they have been translated into more than thirty languages, won many prizes around the world and been widely adapted for film, music, theatre, radio, and dance. He has also written operas, plays, and films including River and Mountain, both narrated by Willem Dafoe. He has collaborated with artists including Olafur Eliasson and Stanley Donwood, and with the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally bestselling books of nature-poetry and art, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E. M. Forster Prize for Literature. Macfarlane lives in England, where he is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

From the Back Cover

ies ago, mountains were considered forbidding and forbidden—the abodes of dragons and other ill-tempered grotesque beasts. But with the growing recognition that the Earth’s surface had not been created once and for all but was slowly evolving, mountains came to be seen as the unexplored text of the Earth’s story—a terrain that scientists, adventurers, naturalists, and, finally, travelers began to explore. In Mountains of the Mind, Robert Macfarlane blends cultural history, meditation, and memoir to show how early geologists helped transform our perceptions of the wild, chaotic landscapes; how the allure of height increasingly drew fearless climbers, culminating in the romantic figure of George Mallory, the passionate Englishman who died on Mount Everest in 1924; and how the elemental beauty of snow and ice coalesced into an aesthetic of the sublime.
Mountains of the Mind is at once an enthralling work of history, an intimate account of Macfarlane’s own

From the Inside Flap

Three centuries ago, mountains were considered forbidding and forbidden?the abodes of dragons and other ill-tempered grotesque beasts. But with the growing recognition that the Earth?s surface had not been created once and for all but was slowly evolving, mountains came to be seen as the unexplored text of the Earth?s story?a terrain that scientists, adventurers, naturalists, and, finally, travelers began to explore. In Mountains of the Mind, Robert Macfarlane blends cultural history, meditation, and memoir to show how early geologists helped transform our perceptions of the wild, chaotic landscapes; how the allure of height increasingly drew fearless climbers, culminating in the romantic figure of George Mallory, the passionate Englishman who died on Mount Everest in 1924; and how the elemental beauty of snow and ice coalesced into an aesthetic of the sublime.
Mountains of the Mind is at once an enthralling work of history, an intimate account of Macfarlane?s own experiences, and a beautifully written meditation on how memory, landscape, imagination, and the landscape of mountains are joined together in our minds and under our feet.


From the Hardcover edition.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375714065
• ISBN 13: 9780375714061
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336