Into the Silence: the Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest 9.2.2012 edition

The definitive story of the British adventurers who survived the trenches of World War I and went on to risk their lives climbing Mount Everest.
 
On June 6, 1924, two men set out from a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge just below the lip of Everest?s North Col. George Mallory, thirty-seven, was Britain?s finest climber. Sandy Irvine was a twenty-two-year-old Oxford scholar with little previous mountaineering experience. Neither of them returned.
 
Drawing on more than a decade of prodigious research, bestselling author and explorer Wade Davis vividly re-creates the heroic efforts of Mallory and his fellow climbers, setting their significant achievements in sweeping historical context: from Britain?s nineteen-century imperial ambitions to the war that shaped Mallory?s generation. Theirs was a country broken, and the Everest expeditions emerged as a powerful symbol of national redemption and hope. In Davis?s rich exploration, he creates a timeless portrait of these remarkable men and their extraordinary times.