And the Conquest of Everest - The Great War

Very interesting and exhaustively researched treatise on the early exploration of Everest, with comprehensive coverage of the historical and political context. The only downside is that it can be pretty hard keeping mental track of all the players and their back stories.

This book was an epic read, and every person who claims to have read every word (if they aren't lying) deserves a medal. Some passages were brilliant and sublime; other pages were plodding and mundane. I learned a great deal; in some cases more than I wanted to know. I agree with other reviewers who think the text could have been served by a judicious editing. Subtract fifty pages, and in my opinion, it would have been a better book.

The topic of WWI and the impact it had on a generation of young men (and women) is a fascinating topic to me. I did enjoy the first part of the book, which covered the main characters' experience in the war. The book bogged down for me in the second third of the book with the Everest expedition and planning.

The research on the book is outstanding, but I lost interest amidst all of the details.

I think that my interest is more on WWI, and less on the first Everest ascent - and that's probably the reason the book didn't hold my attention. If you're interested in those expeditions, you would probably find this book very interesting.

Excellent at putting this generation in perspective, through WWI and in the mountains that the British made their next great test. Wade's strong narrative is make weaker by the poor maps in the Kindle edition of his fine book.

Long introduction to every character but amazing what the early mountaineers survived.

Very proud to have known Gee Kempson who was on the early Lord Hunt expeditions before the final successful summit in 1954

This amazing story and the lives of those involved in it, is told in such a clear way that you don't want it to end. The personal histories of those individuals, prior to the attempts to conquer the mountain, were as interesting for me as the expeditions themselves. A brilliant book...could not put it down.

As an explorer and author with particular interest in the historic period covered in this book, I can honestly say it is the finest accounting of not just an epic time, but it reveals the true soul of a nation.

Wade Davis takes the reader along through a sweeping history that reveals the suffering of a nation transformed into a national quest.

It is simply the best history of both the First World War and the exploration of the Himalayas written to date.

James Michael Dorsey
Author of Tears, Fear and Adventure

A vivid description of World War 1, and the effect the war had on the men who would try to initially conquer Mount Everest. It is a true human interest story, mixed with high adventure, and the stuff of life.

This is a wonderfully written book. Wade Davies takes you through the horrors of Great War in heart-stopping, gripping prose, introducing you to the key characters of the 1920s attempts on Everest along the way. I really felt the life and times of the early 20th Century come to life.
Read this book.

This is a magnificent production.
Wade Davis takes a holistic view of the society and the times that launched the earliest Mt. Everest attempts. He brings together, I believe for the first time, the forces behind the effort. It is a well made, hefty volume that is packed with insight by a great writer. If you enjoy history, exploration, or Mt Everest, this is a must-read.

Encompasses not only the struggle for Everest in the early 1920's but the social and political mood of the time through the biographies of not just Mallory, but all the men who planned and executed the attack on the mountain. An incredible story , incredibly researched, of misguided heroics. A must read!

Brilliantly researched and written account of fading colonial India, the impact of WW1 on its survivors and the origins of the quest to conquer Everest and a wonderful history of the climbing of that mountain.

No author captures the depth of history in such passionate clarity, and brings it into the colloquial, the heart. This is a treasure to read. Savor each chapter: it will change you for good, for good.

Simply excellent. I gets into the details of the entire early years of the conquest of Everest and what led up to the 1924 expidition. It is well written. One actually has the feeling of being there...

Great story but way too long: almost 500 pages into it and Mallory is still not on the fateful climb. Filled with excessive details; makes for tedious reading at times. I love adventure books but this one could have come in at 300 pages and done the job.

While Mr. Wade makes an interesting connection between the zeitgeist of the nation after World War I, and is able to bring to life the rigors of climbing at high altitude when it was in its infancy, he does tend to linger salaciously on Mallory and his circle during their undergraduate days.

Audaciously thorough. Reads like a doctoral dissertation. But one on Tibetan geography or Buddhism.

Occasionally the book lapses into lists of either places, people, or which people were in which places at a particular moment.

Unfortunately, the trill and drama of the attempts get lost in the minutiae.

For those of us without an encyclopedic memory of the mountain and its surrounds, the addition of numerous maps and illustrations would have been well received.

Would recommend only to the Everest completists.

The electronic edition of this book suffers greatly from the lack of maps and illustrations. I'm not sure if any of the photos survived but they too would be a huge addition. The story is fascinating and the writing competent, but without maps and illustrations it is very frustrating to try and follow the action.

Great story overweighted by way too much detail. Could have been half the length and more effective. Still, with reading if you are interested. Wish author could have gotten more into various theories fir/against Mallory's and Irvine's probability of submitting.

If you are are a reader of the sort that would read this book either you have previous knowledge of the times,lands, routes, and minor destinations that are the subject of this beautifully conceived book OR you enjoy travel adventure and history. If you are of the former you will have no need for the maps and will enjoy unimpeded nostalgia in the Kindle edition. If, like myself you have no real intimate knowledge of the landscapes of horror and beauty that are the stage and subject then you must buy and wait for the physical copy! Don't even count on your fire i thing or pc... all e editions of the maps are pathetic.

I bought this book because I love this particular time in history. The writing, right off the bat, was very dry. It was a struggle to get through the first few chapters and I ultimately returned it. This is something that would usually be right up my alley, so I was quite disappointed.

Although this story could be interesting, it is more a catalog of mind numbing details of the expedition plodding around Nepal and Tibet. The lists of towns and villages they visit, and every rock, crag, valley and summit are presented in a never ending litany but there are no decent maps or any way to get a real sense of where they're going (the two maps at the back are worthless ).
Anyone with a detailed knowledge of the geography of the Himalayas and Mt Everest would probably enjoy this, but for the casual reader it's really tedious. More editing and more maps would be a vast improvement.

5567. Into the Silence The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest, by Wade Davis (read 9 Jul 2018)This book, published in 2011, attracted my attention since in my youth I read quite a bit about mountain climbing, including James Ramsey Ullman's Kingdom of Adventure: Everest, which I read in sheer fascination on 15 Aug 1948. I found this book long, excessively detailed, and less absorbing. It tells of the British expeditions in 1921, 1922, and 1924. The 1921 foray I found too detailed abut the accounts of the oher eforts do tell exciting sories. The account of the experiences of the men on the expeditions in World War One and thsoe accounts are of course frightful. This book does and excellent job teling of the efforts in the Twenties, and we learn that Mallory's body was discovered in 1999, which I had not known. While sometimes overly detailed this is no doubt the definitive book on the British attempts to scale Everest in the Twenties.

Going into the book I knew that it would be about more than Mallory and would include him in the context of WWI and the history of Everest. Indeed, I had high hopes for the book after I read the preface and thought that there would be a engaging story about how Mallory's Everest attempt was some sort of a spiritual/psychological reaction to the horrors of the Great War.

Instead, the book then began to bog down like walking through a mud-filled trench in WWI or climbing with no oxygen on Everest. Page after page of historical names and places numb the mind. Do we really care who packed what clothes on a diplomatic mission or if someone played tennis while trying to secure permission for an Everest expedition? The task is even harder because I am assuming that most readers will not be familiar with the all of the place names. You could refer to the maps, but that would slow down the reading even more.

I have to admit that I did not finish the book and do not have a strong desire to do so.

If you have any interest at all in understanding what it is like to attempt to conquer the tallest mountain in the world, your search has ended. This is the book for you. As you know, sometimes a book can surprise you. Expecting one thing the reader is startled to find another. This is the way it is with Wade Davis' treatment of George Mallory's three attempts to be the first person to climb to the summit of Mount Everest. No worthwhile detail is spared in the writing of this book.

Davis accomplishes three major goals in writing this book, whether they were intended or not we do not know, but this is what you get out of pouring your energy into this book.

1st You will understand mountain climbing. You will learn more about the subject than you could possibly want to know. I would think that this book should be mandatory reading for anyone who is involved in this sport. The agony, the pain, the skills needed, and the sheer willpower to climb this mountain or any mountain is clearly stated, and done so in a powerful narrative that will live beyond the book. You feel the pain of the climbers, and the exhilaration of each success. When they are disappointed, so are you.

2nd You will learn more about World War I referred to at the time as the Great War than you would learn, if you read a book entirely devoted to the war. Author Wade Davis has captured the war in all its detail. From trench warfare, to Mustard gas to the futility of the decisions that were made that unnecessarily cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of English boys in the prime of their lives. No doubt is left in the readers mind that England basically lost its status as the number one military power in the world when it lost a generation of its youth - the country simply never recovered.

3rd You will understand English society, and this specific period of history from about 1924 to 1925. What it means to be part of a class and never able to leave that class? What non-acceptance is like, simply because you did not attend the right schools, or come from the correct family background. There's a reason why generations later when English bands become famous, the players like the Beatles, and others choose to live overseas and not in their native England. It's not just taxation. It's about leaving behind class structure, and freedom. John Lennon to his death always referred to himself as working class.

The BASIS of INTO THE SILENCE

From the 1800's into our present era, mankind has been climbing mountains. As an example the Swiss Alpine Club was founded in 1863. Most climbing occurred in European during attempts to climb European mountains. The real quest occurred beginning in the 1900's with the desire to attempt to climb the Himalayan Mountains many of which were 10,000 to 15,000 feet higher and much more difficult to climb than mountains in Europe. Mount Everest at the summit reaches a height of 29,035.

ORGANIZATION of INTO THE SILENCE

There are 13 chapters in this 576 page narrative, and there are many players. The star however is George Mallory born in 1886, he would go on to take part in three separate expeditions to Mount Everest beginning in the early 1920's. More on Mallory later.

What the author does so successfully is bring each participant in the Everest expeditions into the book in different sections and then spends pages going through the individual biographies. A very large part of each person's background is their experiences in World War I. No horrific detail of battles fought is spared in an attempt to have the reader fully understand what that war was like, and how it affected each soldier for the rest of their lives, and more specifically, each mountain climber.

As a reader I began to understand the Great War and fill in the gaps in my knowledge. The book captured a reality that could never be portrayed in the movies because no one would sit still and watch the reality. These men were formed by their experiences in the war, and it is clear how badly scarred they were by these experiences. Essentially England never recovered and would lose its standing in the world. World War II would simply finish them as a world power in spite of the fact that they were the victors.

THE STORY

George Mallory's three attempts to conquer Mount Everest is what this book is all about. History records that each of Mallory's attempts failed. There is drama in this book. There is action, and pain, and fear, and always HOPE. It is the hope of conquering a goal accompanied by unbelievable hardship in the attempt to realize the goal, which is standing on the summit of the tallest mountain in the world, even if only for a moment.

There is always the element of LUCK. Think about it, one moment you are within a 1000 feet of the summit, looking out 100 miles at unlimited mountains in one direction. The temperature is a pleasant 30 degrees - no wind. An hour later, a storm is coming in from the other direction. Temperatures drop 40 degrees in that hour. The wind goes to 60 miles an hour. You can't stand, you are fighting for your life. Whether you live or die is up to forces you do not control. In the end, the elements can break you, no matter how strong your body is how strong willed you are.

Perhaps you are that strong in both your mind and your body, but one of your companions breaks down. What do you do? Climb to the summit alone and succeeding because you left someone else to die a 1000 feet below? Do you instead abandon the summit and help your companion make it back down to camp and save his life. This is precisely what happened to George Finch in the 1922 expedition. Finch would have made the summit. He was using oxygen and Mallory who preceded him by a day did not. George Finch was accompanied by Geoffrey Bruce, and when Bruce could not go on, Finch made the decision to save Bruce's life rather than go on to fame and fortune. He chose honor.

There is one point in the book when Mallory and two other companions are on a shelf within ten feet of the edge and they must stay the night. They are inside a tent which has a base to the tent. There is an intense storm through the night. Winds are gusting at 70 and 80 miles per hour. They feel the wind at one point begin to pick up the base of the tent, and there is nothing they can do but continue to place their full body weight on that base. Just a little more wind and they would be swept over the side into an abyss that would last for 1000's of feet. Every step on Everest whether thought about or blindly taken can lead to death. That is what this book is all about. You are putting your life on the line for 29,000 feet both up and down the mountain.

Into the Silence is an incredible adventure story for all of us, and readers of all ages. In the end Mallory does not conquer the mountain. England mourns its hero and the hero's death that he embodied. Those that lived while Mallory died do not know how Mallory died. They only know that he died attempting to conquer the summit. They did not know if he made it to the very top or not along with his companion, Sandy Irvine, because they both disappeared high on the North East Ridge. They were sighted less than 1000 feet from the summit before the end.
It took another almost 75 years to begin to unravel the story and learn the truth or as much of the truth as can be learned. An expedition was sponsored to try to find Mallory's remains and with the remains the story of the end. This was 1999. I will not go into that expedition, but they were successful in finding the remains, and most of the mystery. Some still believe Mallory made it to the top, and others have their doubts.

It took 30 additional years after Mallory's last steps before another Brit named Edmund Hillary placed his feet on top of the summit. With him was Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. When asked while on a lecture circuit why are you trying to climb Everest, Mallory responded with the classic, "Because it's there." The real answer is so much more complicated than that and will have you at the edge of your seat for 500 pages. You will not want this book to end, and you will walk away from it, so much richer for the experience. Thank you for reading this review.

Richard Stoyeck

As I write this brief review there are already ninteen others that have pretty much covered all there is to say about this book, both good and bad. However, I feel compelled to provide a brief review given that the store and the publisher went to the trouble and expense to send me a review copy.

This is quite simply a monumental work that I suspect will be the standard by which all others to come on the subject will be judged. I have not read all or most of the literature on climbing Mt. Everest but will surely have this book in mind when reading similar material in the future. The book is 672 pages long and is not one that the reader will pick up and read in a night or two or three or... It is a quite simply a mini-course on World War I, the beginning of the end of the British Empire, the numerous attempts, and reasons for, the scaling of Mt. Everest, and highly enlighting mini-biographies of the participants in this drama including George Mallory and Stanley Irvine to star or hero status not only in the world of climbing but world wide.

While the book is very well written, meticulously researched, and a pleasure to read it is not for everyone. It is long and many of the names of the geographical locations and participants are difficult to pronounce and sometimes the details are a bit to well...detailed for the general reader. While my review copy did not contain maps the publishers information on the hardback copy indicates there are maps which are a must for all but the most enlightened geographical reader. That being said the book is one of those rare efforts where the reader knows the outcome but is driven to read on until the end. It's that kind of book. The story and writing combine to almost compel the reader to continue even though it is a long read.

If you are looking for a book on the subject of George Mallory and the attempts to climb Mt. Everest with all of the cultural forces that made such attempts almost mandatory, all placed in context in a seamless, flowing book that will make you pleased you made the effort, then this book is for you.

The summit of historical literature that is. Cannot add much to the superb reviews already given. Suffice to say 5 stars without any reservations. Read it slowly and appreciate the immensity of the research job performed by Wade Davis. He could have written an excellent book just about the expeditions without all the rich and detailed biographical, historical and cultural background but it was an immeasurably greater book for having done so (the bibliography and notes are simply outstanding). There may be mountaineering books written in a more scintillating fashion but this was far more. It was an extraordinary and moving paean to a time and place in history, nature itself, and some remarkable people who survived the worst cataclysm imaginable, then lived or died on terms that most would not choose but they did.

To call Wade Davis's excellent book on the British Everest Expeditions of 1921, 1922 and 1924 a work on mountaineering is to do it a disservice. It is an intelligently written and painstakingly researched story that weaves much more into the narrative than how three successive expeditions tackled Everest and failed.

Wade places these post World War 1 climbs into a very broad context: the world of the Edwardian gentleman Alpinist and their studied denial of professionalism (to the extent of resisting the use of oxygen on Everest as it was not quite "good form"); the emergence of the Bloomsbury milieu in which many of the mountaineers moved - its decadence as well as intellectualism; the religious beliefs and customs of Tibet as well as its 19th and 20th century troubled history with China and Britain's imperial meddling in the region; the need for a specific British success in a feat of exploration to redeem the country after 1918 and the failure to achieve that other great international trophy: the first to the South Pole. Each of these is covered in detail allowing for the mindset of the mountaineers and their hosts to be better understood - as well as their final failure.

However the central piece of context is that of the Great War. With one exception (Irvine) all the climbers were frontline officers who survived the war. As the narrative unfolds Wade looks at each in turn outlining their war and how its horrors impacted on each one. Their stories are told in stark and brutal detail. It is clear that at war's end they carried the burden of what they had seen and who they had lost. Their response to life, danger and death was clearly conditioned by the temporary and fragile nature of their wartime experience. All of this background takes time to present (in the 600 pages or so we don't start on the first expedition until the late 200's) but is not only essential to the unfolding drama but presented in a skilful way that is easy to read.
The second part of the book looks at each of the three expeditions in turn showing how gradually the climbers reached higher up Everest until the summit was less than 1000 feet away and ends with the death of Mallory and Irvine on their final attempt (by now using oxygen) to reach the summit. The emotions provided by the book are complex. At times it is difficult to empathise with the main characters. The imperial attitude towards bearers and sherpas (despite a few occasions of considerable bravery to protect then) will leave an unpleasant taste to modern readers. The carriage by bearers across much Tibet of items clearly not crucial to an expedition - bottles of vintage champagne from private personal cellars and tins of foix gras - again is symptomatic of a bygone age of privilege. One word used frequently by Wade in describing team members at different times is "lassitude".

Yet this remains a story of determination as well as personal strength and bravery. The final, 1924 expedition shows this most of all. Probably one of the key factors in reducing the strength of the climbers for the one last attempt was the energy devoted to climbing up to a top camp to bring back, and so save their lives, four sherpas who had broken away from the main descent team and returned to the higher camp where they would otherwise die of exposure. Faced by the worst weather for many years repeated attempts are made to conquer Everest. Each in turn fails leaving the bearers exhausted (many walked out, two died) and the sahibs close to physical collapse (frost-bite, snow blindness, altitude sickness and physically weakened). Yet, despite apparently having his own misgivings, Mallory decides on one final attempt at the summit with Irvine and both head up alone from the top camp but do not return.

The irony that dawns on the reader during this final expedition is that the climbers are in fact reliving that Great War experience. It is a "campaign", repeated offensives are launched to push just a few yards further up the mountain, often followed by retreat and retrenchment. The sherpas are formed into "assault groups" to set up forward posts. Hardship, injury and danger from the unknown is a constant. Even the arguments over whether to use oxygen or not echoed the British wartime debate over whether to use modern technology to help break out of the stalemate. It is this that in the final analysis makes this such a sad work. Here were the survivors of a generation that suffered terribly during the Great War. Their attempts on Everest can perhaps be seen in part as a response to this. Having lived so closely with death and disfigurement for so long they took greater risks than otherwise might have been the case and were more dogged in the face of possible failure.

Although unlikely, Mallory may have made the summit, dying on the way back. The discovery of his body in 1999 does little to prove or disprove this. It is perhaps fitting though, that like so many of his wartime comrades his precise fate will never be known.

It's hard to imagine such a terrific book. I had no pre-conceived notions of the book since I received it as a gift from my daughter; I'd read no reviews nor heard about the author beforehand.

You plunge in and are immediately swept away to the tragedy of WWI and the terrible price a generation paid. Then the postwar search for meaning, with the Conquest of Everest as a rallying point for a nation still wounded and healing. A thrilling story told with pace and beautiful writing that takes you right into the heroic explorers' lives.

As the book unfolds you begin to marvel not only at the story, but at the author's own heroic research work to synthesize from myriad sources such a gripping story. If it was a novel, you would think it a terrific story well imagined. The punch line is that it's all true! With every sentence based on facts unearthed through a decade's worth of research; the author's own amazing journey to create the book is as epic as the facts related. The bibliography describing the book's journey from idea to the printed page is itself a story worth reading.

Subsequently I looked up the author and discovered he is an accomplished explorer, with his own Mallory-esque story. There can be few modern-day explorers like him, and it's clear the book addresses the motivation of explorers everywhere and their seemingly quixotic peregrinations. Perhaps helping to answering the question Why?

I always read the one and two star reviews because I often find a very different view to mine that I hadn't considered before. I did so when I read this book and once again realised how a book can be received or perceived by other readers. I respect other opinions even when I don't agree with them but I think that in this case some people have misunderstood this book and the author's approach to the topic. The sub-title "The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest" should have indicated that it was not just a chronological account of the ascent of Everest. It covers so much more including and probably most importantly, the way the First World War affected people and in particular the people who went on this and other expeditions. If readers were also prepared to watch the lectures given by Wade Davis about the book and the subjects it covers, they may come to appreciate why there is so much more information contained in the book and could possibly return to it with a different attitude. I found that the peripheral information in it added immensely to the whole experience of reading it. For me this, quite simply, is one of the best books that I have read. I have read it several times and when I loaned it to someone and never got it back I bought a second copy and paid silent tribute to the taste of the person who stole my first! My reaction to the book may in part be influenced by the fact that I have walked the route to Everest base camp so I have seen some of the locations mentioned in it.I would recommend this to anyone but I bear in mind that I have done the same with other books and the reactions have been from five stars to one so I understand that books can be so much a personal thing.

I don't mind the length. Ultimately, the book worked. I enjoyed most of the detail. But there was too much repetition in some places and a *lack* of detail in other places! I didn't mind the repetition. (The repeated trench war sections were probably a good way of getting the point across of how long and pointless this terrible aspect of life was.)

But here's my big complaint: Lack of detail - and in several ways:

1) The book made numerous mentions of locations, not shown on any of the maps included in the book. Grrr. The maps just weren't detailed enough - pretty surprising oversight considering how excessively-detailed the text was. For example, there was no detail map of the area around Everest itself making it difficult at times to figure out what was going on - especially in the 1921 reconnaissance trip where the climbers were errantly wandering around rather than headed in a relatively straight line. And it would have been useful to have some profile maps with altitudes as well.

A lack of better maps is simply inexcusable in a book as detailed as this. I went online in hopes of finding maps but couldn't even find some of the places the author mentions.

The author frequently talks about the wonderful maps that were made during the '21 trip. Well, where are those maps? How come they're not in the book? Similarly, the photos were frustrating too. The author mentions photos but it's never clear if those photos are in the book or if so, which one it is. It's pretty clear that significant photos were simply not present. And some of the photos could use annotations.

2) The author frequently fails to define terms and phrases. What's the "snout of a glacier"? What's a glissade? And so on. It's remarkable that the author gives so much detail in other areas but is so cavalier about terms. Yes, some of these I was able to look up online but many I was not. For example, what's the difference between a Whymper tent and a Mummery tent? The author keeps mentioning which tents were used when. But without telling us why this was significant, why keep telling us about it? I couldn't find explanations online either except for some old pics lacking in detail. And why does the difference in tents matter? I'm sure the author knows but he never told us.)

3) The author talked and talked about the oxygen tanks but with so little detail. For example, I would have liked to understand where the climbers had the ability to refill the tanks. Base camp? Back in India? Why no references to the death zone of which the climbers were completely ignorant? The author does occasionally make reference to modern understanding (for example, explaining how the climbers were unknowingly acclimatizing) but does so too infrequently. For example, there few other comparisons - such as what modern oxygen tanks weigh. I would have liked to have had those details.

4) Most of the biographies appeared early on in the book. By the time they got up on the mountains, I had forgotten many of the subtle relationships. Some timelines and tree diagrams connecting people and experiences together would have been so helpful. It was especially hard keeping track of the porters. Most of the references to the porters were very brief and with little detail.

Despite all these complaints, the book was very good. I blame the editor (or lack thereof) who really should have caught these issues and made the author address them. I give the author 5 stars for this massive achievement but the book will have to live with 4. The editor gets -1 star.

I have read a lot of narratives of modern climbs of Mount Everest, and I knew of Mallory's death in the 1920s, but that's all I knew. This book is massive, as befits the subject of Everest, and in fact, it covers a lot more than just Mallory's last, fatal climb.

Perhaps the most stunning part of the whole book is the description of World War 1 (the Great War) which takes up the first 30 or so pages of the book and which recurs again throughout the narrative. The scale on which young men went to senseless deaths has never been more vividly portrayed, and the point seems to be that those who, somehow, survived this carnage had a different view of life and death than we can grasp today.

Davis's research is unbelievably detailed, and it is also somewhat stunning to consider the quantity of written materials that men left behind in the 1920s. One wonders whether future historians will be able to access the minutiae of our daily lives, now so plenteous in electronic form, but perhaps much more evanescent than letters home, sent by courier from the Himalaya. Is it possible that the 21st century will be the largest gap in history since the invention of writing?

As far as the story of the three attempts made by Mallory and others to "conquer" Everest, it is covered in exhaustive detail. And it is no fault of the writer, but the story is ultimately unsatisfying, because the climax of the whole thing is invisible, undocumented, and unsolved. Some believe that perhaps Mallory and Irvine actually reached the top of the mountain and died on their descent, but Davis does not lend any credence to this theory. But after hundreds of pages in which every step by every member of the expedition is told from multiple points of view, to get to the final chapter and have it all lost in the clouds is a let-down. It can't be helped, of course. But as a narrative, it is not really successful.

Davis is attempting not only to tell a good story, but also to simply record for history what happened. These two goals are not necessarily in complete harmony. As story-telling, the book could be much shorter and be better for it. But as historical record, it should of course be as complete as possible.

the version that I read, a pre-publication edition, had no photographs or maps (or index), and all 3 would have helped. In particular, the lack of maps was troubling, since Davis goes into great detail about routes and approaches, but it's too much to picture. I assume that the final version will be equipped with maps and photos. As others have mentioned, the annotated bibliography is a tour de force in itself, and could keep an interested reader or historian busy for decades!

Even as an armchair traveler, I found much to enjoy and the book kept me reading to the last page. But not everyone will be so interested. Still, I would recommend the portions describing the Great War to be read by anyone who harbors any belief that wars are noble expressions of patriotism or who wants the generals to be given the power to make decisions about war.

The sub-title to this tome is The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest, all three complex subjects that could be described in separate volumes but that Davis has combined a 580 page story that reads like a fantastic yarn of British school-boy adventures.
We are treated to a history of England's elite young men, the poets and dreamers of the public-school variety as they interact in Britain's schools, until they are called up and led away to the slaughter of World War I; the best and brightest left dead and dying in the mud of the battlefields in France and Germany defending their hearth and home. The great detail that Davis delves into on the dreadful spectacle of battle in the trenches shoes his aptitude for history, a s does the fact finding he went to in procuring the intricate backgrounds of the climbers that where sent on the mission to be the first to conquer Everest.
In 1921 this elite group of men joined forces in India and trekked through the country, sometimes on foot, horse or yak and led a British unit of climbers assembled on a mission not just to climb Everest but to explore, chart the geography of unknown regions of the world and to explore and bring back samples of fauna and flora from the entire region on behalf of the Royal Geographic Society.
As we read we ravel with this noble group as they discover and describe the complications of a trek of this nature and learn the pitfalls that will befall this and any subsequent mission. Mallory the lead climber, who ultimately perishes upon the slopes of the grand giant of a mountain he helps popularize for the world, is a complex character unto himself and thanks be to all the historical notes and letters he and his fellow climbers on the expedition wrote we can find out now all the intrepid adventures and people they discovered on the way to the world's greatest adventure.
A fine story told in a masterfully readable way Into the Silence shows how the British where the backbone of the world during the time of the Empire.

There is little new here, particularly for devotees of The Great War and Himalayan mountaineering. WW1 and Everest's history are well-known; combining both topics is the real innovation. The war's enormous trauma for survivors has long been apparent, but Davis makes the strongest connection yet between it and the aspirations of the first generation of Everesters. They hoped, desperately, for some noble achievements to fill the void left by the world's most horrible conflict. The author documents this clearly, in thrilling prose, and reveals much about The War and mountaineering. This cannot illuminate the motivations of climbers in other times, so it does not succeed in broadly explaining a pastime often described as "crazy" by outsiders. But we understand George Mallory and the Lost Generation better, not least because the many fine thumbnail biographies and detailed anecdotes deftly recreate their lost world. The "excessive" detail is all there for a purpose beyond thoroughness. Davis properly exposes British class and colonial pretensions and lauds the heroic Sherpas and other Asian participants, though not as fully as M. Isserman & S. Weaver. (A review of their "Fallen Giants" appears below.) Overall, this enhances Davis's reputation as scholar and literary stylist.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful /5.0 out of 5 stars

Oh, The Humanity Of It!, March 14, 2009
By Chimonsho (Turtle Island) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes (Hardcover)
Finally, a truly substantive history of Himalayan climbing. Among many fine narratives of the world's tallest peaks, "Fallen Giants" goes farthest in locating mountaineering in proper sociopolitical context, though British expeditions get more coverage. Treatment of the Sherpas, in particular, takes full account of their improved status from colonized porters to equal expedition partners. (Cf. S. Ortner, "Life & Death on Mt Everest.") In overdue tribute to their unmatched contributions, heroes like Ang Tharkay and especially Tenzing Norgay receive their due, along with many others who left thinner paper trails. There's more analysis than in other mountain classics, which may bother some rock jocks, but the politics of expeditions matter, especially back when Europe ruled much of the world. But this is no mere radical tract: the humanity of all participants is the main focus. The authors deplore the sensationalism and commercialism of recent decades, seeing a decline from an earlier if not exactly golden age. The 1953 attempt on K2 is a fine centerpiece to the whole. The monumental compassion of that team, who abandoned their chance to summit K2 in a futile attempt to save stricken Art Gilkey, still inspires people in all fields of endeavor. Pete Schoening's remarkable belay which rescued 6 men from a 10,000-foot fall---arguably mountaineering's most dramatic moment---is eclipsed by the awesome possibility that Gilkey sacrificed himself to save those trying to save him. Truly an epic of humanism, one of many shared here.

What an astonishing, marvelous book. Epic but also intimate, its subject matter wide-ranging but also tightly focused, and so profoundly moving that from the very first pages I found myself listening to the narration with my heart in my throat, alternately revolted, astonished, full of pity and amazement. I have already recommended it to everyone I know - I have begged a few friends to read this book - and now I recommend it to you, too.

A little over a year ago, I visited the Everest museum in Darjeeling. The displays consisted mostly of climbing equipment through the ages, representative from every major expedition, and I was completely boggled when I saw sample gear from the first expeditions to tackle Everest in the twenties. The glass cases showed tweed jackets that I would have considered barely adequate on a cold day in New York City. I have done a little tiny bit of casual backpacking - I had, in fact, taken a three-day hike through the western Himalayas only a couple of weeks earlier - so I was primed to look at that useless tweet jacket and see it for what it was: proof of the wearer's almost superhuman strength; a testament of what the human body is capable of when pushed to the limits. And then I saw the black and white photo of George Mallory on the wall, the man who'd died as he reached the summit, and I just melted. He was so beautiful. I wanted to know everything about him.

Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for.

Years ago, after reading Out of Africa and West with the Night I became a little obsessed with Denys Finch-Hatton. He figures prominently in both books as a Mallory type, a gorgeous man who oozed charisma and lived a charmed life up to the moment when he died young and tragically. When Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton came out, I jumped on it. I had to find out more about Finch-Hatton. I had to find out what went on inside the head of a man who seemed to float through life on a cloud of adoration. But Wheeler's biography is weak soup; Denys Finch-Hatton didn't leave much of a record of his own life. The biography had little to offer that Dineson and Markham hadn't already put into their own books. It had no real view from the inside.

Unlike Finch-Hatton, Mallory left a paper trail. Letters, diaries, lecture tours, essays, photographs. Wade Davis gathered them all together to paint his portrait of Mallory, and it's brilliant, but I think he's killed my crush not just on Mallory but on all the golden boys. Because it turns out that Mallory was awful.

Mallory was born respectable, white, male, and British at the height of the Empire. He oozed charisma; people wanted to be around him. And everyone who knew him remarked on how very, very good looking he was. He had taste and a fine artistic sensibility but really excelled as a physical specimen. As a climber. He walked faster than anyone else, remained strong longer, leapt over crevasses, climbed terrifying chimneys of ice, and did it all gracefully. When the other climbers collapsed, he was still strong enough to help them stumble back to camp, to rub oil into frostbitten limbs, and maybe to read a little poetry afterwards, or dash off a quick letter.

But he lacked humility and self awareness. Mallory was pitiless in the way only someone who takes his overabundance of natural gifts for granted can be. He scorned the other climbers for their weaknesses. He happily avoided the worst of the war. He saw nothing to admire in India or Tibet and spoke contemptuously about the people he met on his way to and from Everest. One of the other climbers described him, damningly and aptly, as a "very good, stout-hearted, baby".

And I should take a step back now and say that Mallory doesn't really dominate the pages of INTO THE SILENCE until the latter half of the book, and doesn't take over until the final quarter. Wade Davis describes three separate Everest expeditions that took place in 1921, 1922, and 1924 and he spends much of the first half of the book setting the stage. He writes about World War I in a way that might not shock people who are very familiar with the war but came as an absoute revelation to me. Davis' language is vivid enough that I felt disoriented and almost ill after listening to the WWI chapters; I simply hadn't realized what a terrible travesty had taken place, what a stupid, appalling waste, and how culpable the British command was.

And this is another area where INTO THE SILENCE absolutely excels. At first there's no obvious reason to connect the Everest expeditions to WWI, but anyone who's ever watched an Everest documentary, who's seen a camera pan over a corpse that never gets moved or buried or zoom in on a frostbitten foot, who's listened to a narrator describe how many fingers, toes, ears and noses were lost this season has asked the question: Why? Why do this insane thing?

World War I is Wade Davis' answer. There's the climb as a national project, a symbolic victory for Empire, and Davis also describes the political landscape - the last years of the Raj, a half-hearted conquest of Tibet, the rise of Ghandi. But mostly he tells us about the individuals who made up the expedition parties, the men who traveled halfway around the world to hurl themselves at the mountain. Who were they? Former soldiers. Many of them wounded, alienated, numb to death and unable to recover from the things they'd done and the things they'd seen. The lasting trauma of war is beautifully, and heart-breakingly evoked in the book; combined with the fumbling reach of colonialism, one has the impression that none of these climbers set foot on Everest without stepping through a pool of blood.

I learned to hate Mallory, yes, but fell a little in love with Howard Somervell (a surgeon in WWI who became a pacifist, made it pretty high up Everest, and abandoned his career in England to found a hospital in India) and Edward Wheeler (a surveyer on the first expedition who roamed the mountain alone, and spoke sympathetically of the Tibetans). Wade Davis captures all the outsize personalities, but he never glosses over the faults of the men, or the mistakes that were made along the way.

George Finch was the most polarizing figure, and Davis managed to simultaneously make me hate him - he was a jerk, and treated women horribly - and hate everyone else for him. Finch was a brilliant ice-climber and a scientist, the first real champion of supplemental oxygen as a necessary component of high-altitude mountaineering. But because he had rougher, Australian origins, and didn't rank as high on the class scale as the other climbers, he was treated abysmally - disrespected, mocked, his every achievement greeted with resentment.

Let me finish up with one last observation: Wade Davis is himself an explorer & he writes about the rigors of cold and altitude with the respect it deserves. By the time he's in the thick of describing the expeditions, of whole days spent trying to gain one or two thousand feet, of climbers who have to turn around and head back less than a mile away from the summit of the mountain, he knows how to drive home how crushingly difficult their tasks were. He weaves together the first-hand accounts from letters and reports with his own amazingly evocative language, and the result is immersive. And then, at the end, when Mallory and Irvine's first-hand accounts drop out of the narrative and Davis is left to tell us what others saw, what they conjectured, the loss of those voices is chilling.

Bah. I want to go on! I want to tell you more and more! Listening to this (really, really well narrated) audiobook was an experience in and of itself. I felt so many things. It stirred up so many memories. INTO THE SILENCE is a long book, a bit of an undertaking, but it deserves to be read. My highest recommendation.

Into the Silence is an insightful chronicle of the early British expeditions to Mount Everest, climaxing in the fated and famed 1924 expedition in which George Mallory and Sandy Irvine met their death near the summit of the fabled mountain. It begins in the trenches of the Great War, chronicling the unimaginable horror that met British soldiers as they were slaughtered by the thousands at the hands of German artillery and machine guns. The war experience was not glorious, but instead horrifying and life altering, exposing soldiers to wanton death and destruction mere hours from their home shores but seemingly continents away from the perceptions back home (or even from the perceptions of commanding generals). Returning soldiers, those who made it home, were often irreversibly changed, and it is this change, along with the horrors many had faced, that sets the stage for the quest for Everest. The British colonial illusions and national psyche were altered in a decisive way by the first world war, in a way that makes the push for Everest both a quest for meaning in a seemingly meaningless quest and also a dying convulsion of colonial imperialism in the far-flung Raj. "In reality, the war left the nation bitterly divided, spiritually exhausted, and financially ruined . . . 'We have been moved already beyond endurance, and need rest'" (198-99; the latter half of the quote is a quotation from Mallory's friend John Maynard Keynes). It was almost as if the country needed a new quest in which to be caught up, something new to catch their imagination.

Davis does a great job of chronicling the formative experiences of a number of key players in the years leading up to the Everest treks, and he allows their myriad motivations and aspirations to drive them toward the mountain. It is this element of the book that really gives it life, and take it beyond a simple historical chronicle of logistics, altitudes, and accomplishments, or even a mere adventure story, and into the hearts and minds of the Mallory and the other key figures in the push for the summit of the world.

The expanse of the narrative is truly epic, as it follows a group of men who literally trek off of the map into the harsh and uncharted wilds of the high Tibetan and Nepalese plateaus and mountains of the great Himalayas. Each of the three Everest journeys is followed in detail, with its challenges, discoveries, tragedies, and triumphs. Striking throughout the narrative is the almost casual approach to the mountain that pervades the first two approaches to the mountain, and even persists into the final push in 1924, in the selection of men who were not either young or fit enough for the rigors ahead, the lack of the necessary cold weather gear, and the stubborn refusal by most to even consider the merits of oxygen (or of down coats, introduced to the expedition by oxygen-advocate and climber George Finch on the 1922 attempt), though Mallory seems to have come around to the merits of the supplemental air as critical to any hope of success.

There is much to commend this wonderful book. It contains a great story of human endeavor in the pursuit of what is still considered a gargantuan feat (though countless deaths in the years since testify both to the harshness of the mountain and to attitudes that can sometimes become too casual with regard to the risks inherent in the attempt). The narrative is warm with personal detail, and captures and conveys a rich portrayal of British culture in the period between the wars, still replete with imperialist ideals and the flickering shadows of waning humanist optimism. It also serves as a vivid portrayal of the human cost of the British victory in WWI. It includes a number of maps, which decorate the endsheets, and which prove essential as you follow the various treks through the Himalaya. It also has a wonderful sixteen-page gallery of photos from the expeditions that help the reader envision the people and landscapes, though I was disappointed by the very curious and seemingly random arrangement of the photos, with pictures intermixed from the three expeditions, making it hard to find people or events without simply paging through the gallery.

The gallery arrangement isn't the only weakness, however. I greatly enjoyed the book, but found it too long. Especially in the first half of the book, detailing the run-up to Everest and the first exploratory expedition, I thought there was too much laborious detail. We are treated to a mini-biography of nearly every person we encounter, most of which include a review of the horrors of the WWI battlefields and each character's involvement therein. We also learn about every contour of the trail on the whole months-long march toward Everest in 1921, a journey that is essential to the story but should have been shortened. But once the 1922 expedition gets underway, the writing seems to streamline and the action begins to take over, leaving the last two hundred pages of this nearly six-hundred-page journey as the page-turning adventure writing I had hoped to encounter. It was the laboriousness of the heart of the book that kept this from being a truly great book, but it is still worth reading and has much to commend it. It is thoughtful, colorful, and insightful, and will certainly prove a definitive historical account of these landmark journeys and of these early chapters in the quest for Everest.

If you wish to learn all the many detailed factors that were at play leading up to and during the three separate 1920s British expeditions to Mt. Everest, this is the book for you.

It takes a bit of doing to get your brain up to cruising speed what with all the strange-to-western-ears Tibetan vocabulary but once you're finally underway you'll not abandon this thick and interesting book.

The author also deftly interleaves amazing details from the exceedingly tragic British World War I combat history. His brilliant technique feeds you new and usually shocking aspects of WWI whenever he introduces a new personality to the mix. Because of this timely progression, the reader is thoroughly steeped in what a massive impact the "war to end all wars" had on all the characters of this book in the post-WWI era.

I read every word and look forward to reading more Wade Davis.

Wade Davis, <strong>Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest</strong> (Knopf, 2011)

Full disclosure: this book was provided to me free of charge by the store Vine.

At one point, while a friend of mine and I were both reading this book, we were chatting about it on facebook. I was about 250 pages into it at the time, so it was still all about preparation and backgrounds on the characters and all that rather than actually cracking the mountain. And I STILL said, "these people are bug[censored for the store consumption] nuts. All of them." Well, folks, having now finished it, I'll tell you: by 250 pages in, well, they're all still relatively sane. Things only get crazier after that.

I've been a fan of Wade Davis' since, well, the same time most folks of my generation became Wade Davis fans: <em>The Serpent and the Rainbow</em>. Not the initial publication of the book, but Wes Craven's 1985 film adaptation, which of course played way fast and loose with Davis' Harvard masters' thesis, which got a pretty sizable mass-market printing to coincide with the film. At the time, it was the densest piece of nonfiction I had ever attempted to read, thick with medical, biological, and botany terminology, covered with endnotes, etc. I devoured it, and when his doctoral thesis, <em>Passage of Darkness</em>, was published in 1988, I devoured that one, too. To this day, I credit Wade Davis with my continuing interest in academic nonfiction (to the point where I still read the occasional thesis). Any time Davis pumps out a new book, it's an event. To me, anyway. And this one is so different than his normal ethnobotanical pursuits I couldn't help but be intrigued. What would Wade Davis do with straight history?

Answer: make it compulsively readable, the same way he did with ethnobotany.

As the subtitle will tell you, Davis looks at Britain's obsession with conquering Everest through the lens of World War I and the effective shattering of the British empire. The Raj were still in existence, of course, but rapidly losing hold over India, which would gain its independence soon after World War II (and before, ironically, a British mountaineer would actually make it to the top of Everest). In parallel were the lands of Nepal and Tibet, one a fair-weather ally of Britain's, with an ambassador doing everything in his power to keep it out of the hands of the Chinese (and, through them, the Russians), the other fiercely independent, with the mountain sitting dead the middle. And then there was George Mallory, a man who redefined the term obsession. Mallory would ultimately make three cracks at the mountain in the space of five years, with three different support teams, and the most fascinating part of this book, for my money, is in the politics surrounding the choosing of the members of those support teams. (An equally compelling biography of E. O. Wheeler, in particular, is just dying to be written.) It was during the first burst of these politics that I made the comment about everyone in this book being nuts, if memory serves.

Then they actually start trying to climb the damn mountain, and I'll let you read this for yourselves. You want to; it's a fine, fine book, as is every book Davis writes. Utterly fascinating. Made my 25 Best Reads of the Year list easily. ****

"Into the Silence" is about the process of Mt. Everest becoming a "distraction from the reality of the times" and a nation embracing "a climbing expedition that would become the ultimate gesture of imperial redemption."

This is a terrific--and terrifically detailed--book about the first three attempts to climb Everest and the indefatigable and odd assortment of people behind them. But be forewarned that the mountain doesn't make an actual appearance in the telling of this conquest until page 236 of this 580-page epic.
Wade Davis spends a lot of time re-setting the importance of the year 1921. The first sections dive deep into the battlefield trenches in Europe as individuals emerge who will play a role in the Everest assaults. A nation's ability to embrace a challenge and steel itself to loss is a key theme.

The desire to climb Everest was a big PR battle to restore the nation's confidence. It was spin from Propaganda Bureau, in essence.

It takes a long time to set up the mountain climbing portion of this book. You'll either relish in the fine-grain view or find it tedious. For me, I can't imagine the second half of "Into the Silence" without the first. The climbers come into view--like the mountain itself--with that much more relief. Davis invests considerable time in their background and personalities and the reward is a tremendous payoff when we're on the mountain making our way up.

The end is the most gripping as the climbers struggle with finding a route, learn what gear works or doesn't, and confront unknown issues over oxygen, weather patterns, wind and punishing, brutal conditions. It's in the last sections where George Mallory takes center stage and we follow him up and down the mountain through all three treks and, finally, his final climb along with a thoughtful analysis of whether he reached the summit before perishing.
Fascinating story and very well told. Settle back and enjoy this one.

INTO THE SILENCE is more than a recounting of the British assault on Mount Everest in the 1920s; the book creates context surrounding a fascinating era in the history of the Empire. A generation devastated by the Great War, the War to End All Wars, mounts another campaign, to climb to the top of the world.

From the senseless trench warfare to the futile casualty stations to a wartime England enamored with the romance of the honor of warfare, INTO THE SILENCE is a shocking indictment of General Haig as well as a lens into the entitled feeling that the young men of a nation were born to rule the world. Wade Davis also paints a fascinating portrait of England, the pervasive homosexuality of the public schools and universities, then intricate social fabric where it appears that everyone of note knows everyone else. Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, John Buchan, Rupert Brooke, and other notables intersect with the climbing and exploring crowd.

The whiff of superiority and certainty of the powers that be are demonstrated in the selection of aged military men to lead the three expeditions to Everest, as well as the omission of capable alpinists and climbers in favor of men with the correct social pedigree.

And throughout the book is the palpable sense of foreboding. Anyone with a minimal knowledge of Mount Everest and its lore knows the name of George Mallory. Mallory, tempered in the crucible of the Great War, is drawn, obsessed with climbing Everest. He was a member of the three initial expeditions, and the question of whether he and climbing partner, Sandy Irvine, actually reached the summit in June 1924 is still debated to this day.

Davis also crafts a feeling of futility. Futility in the war, in the misguided military campaign against Tibet, the Raj, and the treatment of Indians, Nepalese, and Tibetans. And certainly the futility of trying to climb Everest. The argument over using oxygen, bottled gas was not gentlemanly. The disdain of science. The inadequate equipment. All find parallels in the disastrous prosecution of the Great War.

Impatience doomed the Everest expeditions. Each expedition is rife with poor decisions, decisions that squandered the energy and reserves of climbers and porters alike. The climbers were all veterans of the war, with the exception of Irvine, too young to have fought, and they had lost nearly all their friends, their brothers, fathers, and uncles. One woman said, "By July 1916, everyone I had ever danced with was dead." Those who survived wanted to live, to seize the day with a vigor that was remarkable.

Mallory uttered those words that immortalized him during an exhausting and financially unsuccessful American and Canadian speaking tour. Said in a fit of pique rather than a thoughtful answer to the question of why he wanted to climb Everest. "Because it's there."

I have rarely been so engrossed by and so impressed with a non-fiction book as I have been by "Into the Silence." As a former climber and lifelong student of the history of mountaineering, I found this work a valuable addition to the subject, as well as a wonderfully written narrative. Wade Davis brings the era, the characters, and the combined stories of World War I and the early Everest expeditions to life in a way that is both moving and insightful. I especially enjoyed his prose style, which, while modern, is reminiscent of the elegant British prose of the early 20th century. His portraits of the members of the 1920s Everest expeditions (especially Mallory), and his depiction of their agonized formation in the trenches of the Great War, cast the subject into a historical context which explains the climbers' lofty ambitions, their sacrifices, and their sufferings in a way I had never encountered before. A very important book on a subject which remains inspiring to this day.

Into the Silence covers the period before WWI, the build-up to the three expeditions and the expeditions themselves (1921, 1922, 1924) with a small "update" in modern times. The book is very well researched and documented. WD goes into great detail about several topics (WWI, British-India history, Tibet etc.) and I enjoyed and learned a lot about this part of the world. I particularly liked the details given about the expedition logistics (what they brought, how they got the gear there) and could not help but think of the organizational nightmare it must have been relative to today's expeditions with all the specialized gear and technology. The first expedition (1921) takes a fair portion of the book with each subsequent expedition taking fewer and fewer pages. This overall is good but I still found some details (as much as I enjoyed them) become a bit much. I do not know how many times a member of the team "went off to collect butterflies or specimens". Some of these details could have been left out so readers may love or loath these parts. I generally liked them.

Although the logistics and history are interesting, the book really centers on the men themselves, especially, of course, Mallory. These men really did see and do a lot in their lives, more so than most of us could accomplish in several lifetimes (war, doctors, explorers, scientists)! They really are fascinating and WD does give each of the men a "historical spotlight" of several pages. Their stories, especially during WWI were interesting (and shocking) and WD does a good job of describing their ordeal. I was fascinated by most of these stories (I could not put the book down for some) but on the other hand, some seem to drag on. There are a lot of people to keep track of over the three expeditions so I do not know what could have been done to help the reader sort them out (a list maybe at the front?). The detail does show the great character of these men and I was hoping for more of a link between the men, the war and the mountain. WD does talk about this but I wanted a bit more insight into the war making (or breaking) these men. Given that WWI was almost 100 years ago, this period and these men are not so easily understood to us today.

The book really peaks in the final third with the various problems and ascents of Everest. WD does a great job describing the ascents and made it feel very real. Problems of the route, oxygen and fitness are all told with flair and kept me turning pages. Throughout the book WD is not afraid to put his opinion on paper and I liked (if not always agreed with) his "look back" at this era and people through basically letters and journals.

The 6 maps are quite good (I love books with maps) with the routes shown. This made following the expeditions preceding the ascents much easier even though some locations are not on the maps. As well, one of the maps is oriented upside down (N at the bottom) making it somewhat confusing! The pictures are also good and I enjoyed looking at them while reading. Note that the pictures are not in chronological order or referenced in the text (it would have been nice to have a "see picture 23" in the text), but these are quite minor quibbles.

SUMMARY: Into the Silence is well written and researched and WD should be commended. After a somewhat slow start getting to know the characters and the time, it really does pick up after 100 or so pages. There is great detail in almost everything (history, culture, logistics, the men, WWI) which generally is fascinating stuff (but some trimming would have been useful) and WD makes it all work most of the time. I have great respect for these men, especially Mallory, after reading this book and found myself looking things up online after reading. I should note that I do not climb or read much about climbing, but still enjoyed this book. Although my review is a 4 read it as a 4.25 (85%) with the caveats noted above.

This book is amazing--in scope, in depth, and in its ability to provide perspective on a wide range of topics. This book immediately reminded me that the British Empire contributed to our knowledge of distant lands and diverse cultures in a way that laid the foundation for our sense of the "small world" we inhabit. While it is easy to criticize empire-building cultures, their excesses and cruelties, it is also easy to forget how much scientific, cultural and geographic information was gathered by these same cultures, who often used the wealth they amassed to fund expeditions into other remote, uncharted areas of the planet, often for reasons beyond claiming those areas for their rulers.

The book began with WWI, which I found intriguing. Though it might seem to be tangential, and possibly a rather curious place to begin a book about the first attempts on Everest, the author successfully makes the argument that WWI directly influenced the politics, personalities and the rationale of the selection process, and greatly influenced the team members' perspectives, motivations and decisions on the expeditions.

As veterans returning from a horrific war, they were thrust into a populace who had been mislead by propaganda indicating that the British involvement in the war was noble and well executed. The families welcomed back shell-shocked men whose experiences varied immeasurably from the images held collectively in the culture. These veterans found they were unable to express what they had seen, heard and lived through in a way that others could understand. There was no going home, even though their feet were planted on their homeland's soil. Departing for distant lands provided relief from this devastating realization. The hardships of the expeditions were no worse than what they had already endured.

The extent of loss of troops began to dawn on the British when sons and husbands did not return home; their triumphal hopes were dashed. The British self-image, which included the "stiff upper lip" and the faith in the nobility of their national pursuits, needed a victory in some context: heroes who could lift the spirits of their countrymen. The conquest of Everest became the venue and the goal.

I found the discussion of the mapping of India fascinating. As something I have more-or-less taken for granted, I learned that this effort was exceedingly demanding, costly (in human lives as well as funding) and required skillful diplomatic negotiations and, at times, deception. Unfortunately, that deception, the inconsistent foreign policies and the poor decisions made by the British in that region engendered such distrust by the eastern cultures that the West is still paying the price today.

The benefits derived as a result of these expeditions, from knowledge of flora and fauna previously unknown, to the development and use of new technologies in photography, in protection against the extremes of the climate and altitude (clothing and bottled oxygen), and in determining elevations of mountains that dwarfed those of the Alps, were foundational for the advancement of technologies we use today. While other reviewers have found these sections on exploration and logistics to be overlong and belabored, I found pleasure in getting online to look at the plants and animals, the regional maps (the advance copies did not have extensive maps or photos) and the pictures of the villages and Buddhist monasteries. This enhanced my sense of being there, of traveling with the parties.

The story of the attempts on Everest, the personnel, their backgrounds, and the experience they brought to each venture is informative. The leading expert in the effects of altitude on the human body was among their number, even though he didn't live to make an attempt. (Did you know that the process of acclimatization to altitude that is in use today had its roots in the late 19th and early 20th century?) The selection process, the politics involved in the selection process, and the personality conflicts reflect the same human dramas that play out in today's expedition planning. If you have read accounts by todays' mountaineers, you will find the same mix of timing, financing and availability issues, of monitoring the expedition members' health and fitness, and of the attempt to maintain a decision-making process, and an esprit de corps, that keeps the climbing party a team.

I highly recommend this book to returning veterans. The challenges our veterans face in their return to the States from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East, are common to all veterans: returning home to a populace who cannot fully grasp their experiences, who want them to pick up their lives where they left off, and who are in denial of the changes imposed upon them by the theater of war. The book is not a "how to" of healthy adjustment, nor can it take away the lingering pain of difficult memories. But it may help a veteran gain some perspective, to see himself and his experiences in the context of shared history with veterans of all wars, and to recognize that he is not alone in his emotional struggle. He will find his way. He will have unique gifts and strengths to share with those around him. And he may create something entirely new as the result of his experiences.

I also recommend this book to anyone interested in mountaineering, in the history of Everest expeditions, and in the political history of India, Nepal and Tibet. The perspective gained will change the way you look at modern climbing expeditions. Today's logistical challenges, and the way permits for modern expeditions are handled by those governments, will also be put into perspective. Even though there are vast differences, striking similarities remain!

There is so much to learn from this book! I intend to read it again. I will share it with anyone with an interest in mountaineering, cartography, the history of WWI or the history of India, Tibet and Nepal. I feel certain that, for a long time to come, it will be a resource for anyone doing research in these fields. It is a story of epic proportions, and the author has managed to do justice to his subject.

*Please note that the use of the male pronoun for today's veterans is not used to exclude the female veterans who have also served.

This is a well written and remarkably well researched book. Substantively, however, it ranges from profoundly illuminating and deeply troubling to incidental, innocuous, and far too detailed. Moreover, the decision to use the unimaginable horrors, untold sacrifice, and over-arching pointlessness that characterized World War I as a backdrop for the first British assaults on Mount Everest seems ill-advised. The author would have us see the inter-generational chasm wrought by the War to End All Wars play itself out on Everest. As an historical interpretation or literary device, however, this simply does not work. When all is said and done, one is left wondering if The War and repeated efforts to reach the summit of the world's tallest mountain were not, in fact as well as in contrived authorial fancy, simply unrelated.

Though the author's discussion of the horrific and predictable butchery of World War I constitutes a relatively brief part of the book, it is the most graphically insightful and moving section of this long and detailed exposition. I've read other treatments of the nightmare of trench warfare, and I've seen films that purported to document the fact that thousands of soldiers, many of the MIA's, were simply buried alive when tons of earth were thrown into the air by highly explosive shells fired from large artillery pieces. I've also read about the unforeseen consequences of hideously debilitating trench foot, and the insurmountable difficulties of maintaining reasonable levels of sanitation during months in water-logged trenches surrounded by the decaying dead. Nothing else that I've seen or read, however, has made me as acutely aware of this unfathomable loss of life, limb, and spirit as Into the Darkness. The author's descriptions of No-Man's Land are devastating, making one wonder what kept the troops going, especially since they must have known, as at Gallipoli and the Somme, that their commanding officers were disengaged, stupid, egotistically indifferent to their fate, unwilling to acknowledge catastrophic blunders, and willfully unaware of the soldiers' suffering.

The much larger sections of the book, devoted to assaults on Everest and the demanding requirements of that endeavor are, in their own way, equally valuable. The descriptions of the dangers and acute discomfort that were necessarily part and parcel of these efforts make one wonder what kept the climbers going, making it almost impossible to imagine how anyone could have gone back for a second time. The troubles with the sections devoted to climbing lie, in good part, in their excessive attention to details of every kind. Unless the reader is thoroughly familiar with the flora and fauna of the part of the world in which Everest is located, much of this account is just a blur of unfamiliar names. Appreciation of these sections requires the highly specialized knowledge of an entomologist, horticulturist, and geologist, as well as mastery of the the peculiar vocabulary of one who is accustomed to thinking about rocky outcroppings, ice formations, snow fields, and other weather-related phenomena found only at extreme altitudes

Furthermore, the long treks to Everest along varying routes, and the environs of Everest itself, are impossible to understand without a detailed knowledge of the geography of the area. If the author had included a map or two so the reader could better follow his discussion, the value of the book would have been substantially increased. As things stand, the reader is often mystified by an abundance of strange names of rivers and locales whose relative proximity and arrangement are crucial to fathoming decisions made by the climbers. The nature of the complex enterprise becomes lost in a jumble of alien sounding designations that are inter-related in ways that are pretty well inaccessible for one who is not a life-long student of Everest.

Nevertheless, the long-term preparation, dangers, suffering, and precariousness attendant to high-altitude climbing are explained in ways that enable us to understand just how overwhelmingly difficult and demanding an effort it was to try to climb the tallest Himalayan Peak. Here, too, there is an enormous amount of detail, but ii is a good deal easier to follow, and seems essential to fully understanding the daunting nature of the endeavor.

The same applies to climbing the mountain. Having read the story of the complex and physically demanding nature of the work required and the suffering endured, the reader will certainly be deeply impressed by the skill, commitment, and courage of the climbers. Simple survival required them to perform in ways that to a non-climber seem impossibly difficult. Progressing toward the summit in arduous stages, from one precariously placed camp to another, is presented in a way that bears keen-eyed witness to the remarkable ability of world-class mountaineers to turn the overwhelmingly arduous into the routine and ordinary.

Still, how many times is it necessary to tell us that some climbers were appalled at the filth and decay contained in each small Tibetan village, and that this was matter-of-factly tolerated by its inhabitants. Yes, I suppose it's true that Tibetans bathe only once a year, but how many times should we be reminded of this, eventually learning that they do it in September, and that they were a bit unsettled by a British climber seen bathing in the summer? And do we really have to know about George Mallory's sex life at Cambridge, including his tepid involvement with James Strachey and the lust felt for Mallory by Lytton Strachey. And John Maynard Keynes, the brilliant and influential economist and mathematician, while at Cambridge was a homo-erotic "copulating machine," though later in life he wed a beautiful ballerina. So? Yes, most of the climbers moved easily in the British upper class and their habits conformed to the norms prevailing in this social location, good to know, but it sometimes takes us too far off topic.

The thematic connection between The Great War and an obsessive, death-defying commitment to conquering Everest is hard to grasp. That those who had been in The War were inured to death and, therefore, not inhibited by fear of dying is offered as part of the story. But more important, we are told, was the need to achieve something clean, pure, and ultimately redemptive, and this could be accomplished by climbing Everest. Maybe so, but I don't see it. After all, Everest itself was a brutally unforgiving foe, and it, too, caused loss of body parts, loss of life, and loss of sanity. It may well be that climbing Everest was a testimony to the drive toward monumental achievement inherent in the human spirit, but I don't think the case has been made. Perhaps it can't be.

I'm certainly convinced that those who repeatedly tried to do the near-impossible on the highest peak in the Himalayas were brave and hardy souls, extraordinary men of skill, strength, intelligence, and steely determination. Surely, however, there must be something more to heroism than climbing a mountain, no matter how difficult and dangerous the task and no matter how many people it inspires. During a time when Britain was financially depleted by World War I, when unemployment rates were extremely high, and life for millions of returning soldiers and ordinary Britons was a constant struggle that they had not chosen and for which they were not prepared, climbing Everest seems quaintly and disinterestedly upper class British. Given the state of their homeland, it also seems frivolous and wasteful.

I don't read Mountaineering books, nor do I know much about George Mallory, however I head the author interviewed and was interested in his contention that the experience of the First World War on the climbers affected their view on risking their lives on Everest.
The first third of the book sets the scene - it's strange to think that only a century ago Britain dominated the world, that Britain was actively concerned about the fate of Tibet and the impact of Chinese encroachment there on its colony in India. The politics of British influence in Tibet affected the pathway to Everest, as the route through Nepal was forbidden (for reasons not clearly explained). The British government expended great effort in mapping the unknown regions in the Himalaya's - another surprise is that so much of this region was unmapped, and the sheer hardship of mapping. There's a tale of one `spy' who entered deepest Tibet and threw numbered logs into one of the main rivers, in the hope that the logs would be picked up near the ocean; this to verify the route of the river, and to estimate its length. That such amazingly crude methods were in use so relatively recently is a major surprise.
The jewel in this book is the description of British society in World War One - that Haig kept 50,000 cavalry in reserve on the Western Front to exploit any `breakthrough' in the trenches; that officers, having gone on leave in the morning, could dine in London the same evening ; that some of the largest amount of land transfers in British history took place in the aftermath of World War One. The impact of the war itself, the gore, the gallantry, the futility is well described, though at this point unsurprising.
The financial preparations for the expedition were surprisingly amateurish, though familiar in the sense that publicity and advertising played a major part in fundraising. The appeal of George Mallory to the British public - King George V attended a funeral service for him after his disappearance - may have arisen from his speaking at publicity tours which were arranged to generate interest and funds for the annual expeditions. Curiously, the author doesn't share the Mallory mania, portraying him as a gifted climber, but headstrong and rather incompetent - Mallory messed up all the photographic plates, ruining the records; on the first expedition he missed the eventual route taken to get to the top of Everest, leading to fruitless extra work. The first third of the book skips along without him. Indeed if there's a hero of the book it seems to me to be the Anglo-Irish leader of the first expedition Charles Howard-Bury, someone I would like to hear more about. As its a real world tale, there are a bewildering number of characters to get to know - those in the British imperial Service, Sir Charles Bell, the London Alpine Club administrators, even the numerous climbers - and this can make the thread of the story hard to follow.
The part of the book I found most hard to follow was the description of the climbing, though I did understand the sheer physical effort, the impact of logistics - every piece of firewood had to be carried, every day's climb had to be planned so that a return to base was possible, the limitations of clothing and equipment. I didn't really understand the rock formations and types of rock etc, and there's a lot about this. Nonetheless a worthwhile book, very readable, brings out the human and political tensions involved in such an expedition.

A magnificent work which took the author over ten years to research and write. The sub-title is important. This is as much about the war experiences that shaped the men of the 1921-24 expeditions. Each one had been doctors, infantry or artillery officers in the worst of the Western Front battles. From that, they were determined, resourceful and infinitely brave. The war experiences were searing. Mallory wrote home from the front, "If hereafter, I say to a friend "Go to Hell", he will probably reply, "Well I don't mind much if I do. Haven't I perhaps been there"?

The central figure is Mallory, friend of Keynes, Graves and much of what was later the Bloomsbury set. An enigmatic figure, Davis captures the genius of the man. It is Mallory who reconnoitered and figured the route up the North Cole. Mallory who established the Camp systems. Mallory who confronted the Second Step. Any climber on Everest follows his footsteps.

Davis gives us a rich cast: Sikhdar, who calculated the exact height of Everest within 28' in 1854 from observations 120 miles away, using pen and paper; why we call it the Norton Couloir, why all parties when climbing from the North, use the East Rongbuk; Somervell, a doctor mentored by Treves, who coughed up his entire mucous membrane and worked as a hospital volunteer in India for 40 years; Finch, who pioneered Oxygen use, climbed higher that anyone at the time and was the reluctant step father of Peter; Odell who made the famous sighting and climbed to Camp VI twice in four days and slept at over 23,000' for twelve days.

The courage and determination of the men, using primitive equipment and improvising on camps and routes, is breathtaking. And contrasts with the Valley Boy insensitivity of the crew that found Mallory in 1999.

I found myself flipping to the contemporary photographs of the climbers, trying to reconcile their actions and feats with the faces looking at us from 90 years ago. This is an epic book.

I have little interest in mountaineering "per se" but Wade Davis's attempt to connect the Mallory/Irvine epic attempt to climb Everest with the Furst World War and its effect on society and imperialism mostly held my attention.
It was a clever idea to link the attempts to conquer Everest post World War 1 to post-imperial angst after the First World War had done so much to dent the confidence of the nation,not to say wipe out the flower of its youth.Davis does perhaps press the point a bit too much,but still it is a valid one.
The book is a tad too long at almost 600 pages,and the author seems to feel the need to justify his ten years of research by putting into print a bit more information than we really need,particularly in the day-to-day details of hikes in the hinterland of Everest,which are somewhat peripheral to the story in hand.
The individual British climbers come across with attitudes which today would be considered racist and unnecessarrly superior,but this has to be veiwed within the context of the times.What comes across more importantly,is their immense courage which I think very few today would replicate,and also their learning and interests,which again are not replicated in our modern more focused educational systems.

Without a doubt the finest exposition of the British Everest attempts in the 1920s. Before Into the Silence, I'd ready many, if not all, of the books focused on the early British attempts to climb Everest, including such primary sources as Howard-Bury's "Mount Everest, The Reconnaissance 1921". What Davis has done in this book is extraordinary. Drawing on a variety of primary sources, he assembles the most comprehensive picture of these efforts that I've ever read. For anyone wanting a picture of what was involved in these efforts and the historical background leading to the climbing attempts in 21, 22 and 24, I highly recommend this book. Meticulously researched, honestly presented, clearly explicated. The reader will come away with as complete an understanding as is possible for what lead up to and then occurred in the British expeditions on Everest in the 1920s. This is truly an extraordinary book. A must read for anyone intrigued by the history of climbing on Mt. Everest.

After devoting two full weeks to this massive book, yesterday I did my own summit push and spent six hours plowing through the final 100 pages, and I must say, I wasn't disappointed. The fate of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine remains one of the greatest mysteries on Everest, but there were so many other factors leading up to the tragic 1924 expedition.

First, The Great War. At the time, no other event in history affected the morale of a nation more than the bloody and devastating war that robbed Britain of its sons and its innocence. A majority of the men involved in the first three voyages to Everest had a role in the war and witnessed atrocities that would change their lives. At first I thought Davis was using the war as a device to generate shock value in portraying gory battle scenes. Then I realized that these men's experiences as soldiers and officers allowed them to tackle a mission with a certain discipline that reflected the attitude of Britain at the height of its imperialism. Thus the sense of patriotism was a driving factor for an entirely English team to be the first to summit the tallest mountain in the world.

Second, the relationship between Tibet and England would determine whether westerners would be allowed to travel through the isolated, mystical country to reach Everest. Davis did a great job outlining Tibet's history, including the slaughter of hundreds of natives by English troops in an attempt at diplomacy at the turn of the century and the Chinese rape and pillaging of Tibet a decade later. Tibet's tumultuous past and its fervent religious practices made its leaders suspicious, but clever negotiations allowed the first team of Englishmen to do their initial reconnaissance of the Everest region.

This preliminary scouting expedition in 1921 was vital to learning about approach to the formidable mountain. I will admit that there was some redundancy and tedium to this lengthy part of the narrative, but all of it was essential to understand the territory and the participants. Mallory, of course, would be involved in all three Everest efforts, but there was a myriad of other climbers and people overseeing logistics, hundreds of local porters and tons of supplies. The second attempt in 1922 brought both new and familiar characters, along with the notion of using supplementary oxygen. Though a number of height records were achieved, injuries, frostbite and a catastrophic avalanche that killed 7 Sherpas would affect future approaches.

The culmination of all the knowledge gained in 1921 and 1922 would be applied to an ambitious attempt in 1924. For Mallory, a return to Everest was both an obsession and carried with it a sense of doom. Despite knowing the outcome of Irvine and Mallory's final summit attempt, the tension of the last 50 pages was excellent. The debate about whether the two climbers ever reached the summit was addressed, but no definitive answer could ever be established. The epilogue was essential, covering the aftermath, Hillary's successful summit 20 years later, and the discovery of Mallory's body in 1999. Davis's meticulous and extensive research lends authority to the entire epic struggle with Everest in the 20's, and the use of diary excerpts and letters made it feel very authentic. I can say with confidence that this is probably the most comprehensive examination of the incredible efforts put forth by Mallory and each of the individuals involved who were determined to conquer Everest.

Having been an avid fan of Everest history for many years I found "Into The Silence" to be THE comprehensive analysis of the geography, culture, politics and individual characters associated with the early Everest explorations. For me it was an added bonus to become more aware of many details around WWI and the impact of that war on the early Everest explorers. A further bonus was the details of Tibet and the role the then Dali Lama played in the early exploration. "Into The Silence" fills in the many gaps in the expedition accounts that Wade Davis very masterfully extracted through years of research in archives primarily in Europe. Its a long worthy read and when I thought it was done I got to the annotated bibliography which, at 43 pages, is a fascinating read in itself. "Into The Silence" is a literary masterpiece which has taken its proper place in my bookcase next to the early Everest expeditionary accounts.

All the superlatives heaped on this book--"monumental," "brilliant, masterpiece", "engrossing," "extraordinary"--are certainly well deserved. Written by the Canadian author, anthropologist and photographer, Wade Davis, this work chronicles the British expeditions of 1921, '22 and '24 to conquer Mount Everest. The tale centers on George Mallory, the greatest UK mountaineer of his time and the only climber involved in all three expeditions, who fell to his death during the last attempt. But the book is much more than a climbing story. Along with fascinating biographies of the major figures involved in these expeditions, Davis explores in vivid detail the effects of World War I on the soul of these men and their nation in general. Most members of the climbing parties were survivors of horrific trench warfare. Davis shows how the effort to scale the world's highest mountain was partly an effort to heal England's war wounds. If anything, however, the story's inherent drama suffers from being too comprehensive. The climbing efforts were truly like complex military actions and at certain points it is easy for the reader to become lost in the many names and probes and features of landscape. Davis's research was thorough and he obviously didn't want to waste any of it. This will not be the last book written on Everest and Mallory, but it will remain a classic. It ends poignantly with the 1999 discovery of Mallory's body and the enduring enigma of whether he actually reached the top.

There are a lot of books about mountain climbing out there, but there are few with such depth of background as this one has. The horror of WWI leading to a desire to be anywhere other than England in its aftermath was an interesting approach, and the author evoked the horrors of that war to great effect. I came to dread each man's story of suffering in the trenches. The story of the expeditions was very interesting: the egos involved, the poor choices, the brilliant climbing, the pain, sickness, and disappointment the climbers endured, and the ultimate futility of what they set out to do. The descriptions of the Tibetan villages and their residents, while seemingly brutal, were taken from the travelers' own journals and letters; the author went to great pains to soften those outlooks by informing the reader about life and religion in Tibet. It was a long read, and at times a bit repetitive, but a great work.

Into the Silence is a remarkable, sweeping account that is part world history, part adventure story and entirely human. Beginning with their childhood years climbing the British hills through their coming together to climb the world's tallest mountain, Davis traces the lives of a group of men and a nation seeking redemption and meaning after the brutality of the Great War. Painful, graphic depictions of Passchendaele, the Somme and other battles are interwoven with tales of romance and love, creating juxtapositions that convey the true madness of the times. Once the climbing begins the book shifts into unbelievably detailed descriptions of the expeditions, from clothes worn to food eaten and even the time of day the men awoke and began the day's work. Descriptions of camps located on knife-edged ridges with cliffs falling thousands of feet away on either side take one's breath away. Particularly interesting and relevant (given the recent, largest-ever accident on Everest) are the descriptions of the sherpas's roles and attitudes during these first attempts. What may be the book's greatest achievement is the incredible suspense generated in recounting a story to which (besides one unanswered question) we already know the ending.

Into the Silence is a great, sprawling, long book that's the result of years and years of research. It's a history book, a geography book, an adventure book and a novel all wrapped up into a thoroughly engrossing read. The type of book you can curl up with numerous late nights and take your time reading. For page after page you're right up there in the mountains, wearing a woolen coat and mitts and a pair of sturdy boots trying to conquer Everest.

Astonishing detail about the logistics, the history, the cultures, the infighting, the financing, the politics, the marketing and the unbelievable personalities.

Just a magnificent piece of work. One of the very rare times that I want to hand out SIX stars. If you love travel, discovery and mountaineering, you'll hardly find better.

Outstanding and detailed explanation of the important work performed to map a previously unexplored area; fascinating details on the innovative attention of these fearless men to accomplish their mission. The author is simply brilliant, which was one key reason I purchased the book. His work spans many disciplines, and this book demonstrates his amazing writing abilities, open mind, and ability to articulate the historical details making the work and exploration details even more important for us to understand. Highly recommended for those loving history within the last 100 years, tied into a set of true stories of survival of the world's most challenging environment, on/near Everest.

I really enjoyed this book - I think the author does a great job of putting the attempted conquest of Everest into the cultural and political context of the time. It's not designed to be a biography of Mallory nor an account of the final expedition per se, so I think some of the criticisms aired elsewhere are wide of the mark. What I personally found amazing were the characters involved - those were the days when people just headed off into the wilderness for years at a time, leaving their families and civilization behind with scarcely a thought. Nearly all of the participants had really interesting back stories (even the unfortunate Irvine who was only 22) and the almost insouciant way they climbed wearing an extra scarf for warmth was quite incredible but understandable in view of the hardships that they had endured in other expeditions.

My only small cavil was that Conrad Anke's assessment of whether or not Mallory could have made it to the top has changed since 1999 which is where the author leaves it - he now thinks it possible - but as Mallory himself said 'A successful ascent includes making it back down' so maybe it doesn't matter.

Wade Davis' "Into The Silence" tells a fascinating tale of the early attempts at attaining the summit of the highest point on the face of the planet. From the first realization, during the massive effort to survey the Indian subcontinent, that there was a peak far back in the Himalayas that was taller than any other mountain on earth, to the initial reconnaissance of the approaches to Everest and first attempts to climb it, this high place drew the imaginations of mountaineers the world over - and particularly in the British Empire.

The discovery of this ultimate summit so near to the borders of the British Empire, north of India, fired the imaginations of British alpinists and explorers. The British Empire had just endured the inferno of "The Great War", World War I, and many of these men, whose explorations and achievements for the greater glory of the Empire, and their own personal sense of achievement, had been interrupted by the 1914-1918 war, were eager to resume their efforts, and to re-establish the position of the British Empire in the world order.

Backdropping the purely exploratory efforts are the geopolitics affecting the explorations. Political tensions between the British Empire, Russia, and China over the disputed Himalayan borderlands lying between their territories, and religious considerations - given that something like 1/10th of the total population of Tibet, the country through which the early approaches to Everest were made - are in religious orders, and the remainder of the population believed in the presence of mountain demons, spirits, and the holiness of the regions surrounding Everest. By bringing these elements into the tale, and explaining how they affected the purely adventurous aspects of the attempts to climb the highest mountain on Earth, Wade Davis paints a more complete picture of the early explorations of Everest and the events leading up to them over decades of the British Raj than any other book I have read on the subject.

By far the biggest story of the first attempts at Everest was the loss of the man who many considered the finest technical climber of the day, George Leigh-Mallory, during the 1924 expedition. Mallory and his younger (and much less-experienced) climbing partner for the summit attempt, Andrew Comyn "Sandy" Irvine, got tantalizingly close to the summit, certainly closer than any before them, but after a glimpse by fellow expedition member Noel Odell at 12:50 pm on 8 June 1924 as they were apparently approaching the base of the final pyramid of the summit, they were never seen alive again.

The debate over the question of whether Mallory & Irvine reached the summit only to meet their deaths on their return, or whether they died in a retreat after a failed attempt, has raged for over 80 years, and is one of the great legends of Mt Everest. Speculation abounded in the immediate aftermath of the event, and most members of the 1924 expedition were certain that the two men were successful.

Tantalizing clues to the men's ultimate fate turned up over the following decades, even as hundreds more lost their lives on the slopes of Everest. A Chinese member of a joint Sino-Japanese expedition in 1975 reportedly told a Japanese member of the expedition of having seen a body, dressed in early-20th Century clothing, in an area below the summit, but the Chinese climber and a companion were lost two days later - swept off the mountain by an avalanche - before the story could be confirmed.

The amazing discovery of Mallory's body in 1999, by an expedition which had been formed for just that purpose, did little to settle the question. Modern-day experts - men who have touched the summit of Everest themselves and know the difficulty of attaining that lofty (no pun intended) goal, including members of the expedition which discovered Mallory's body - have attested to the impossibility of Mallory and Irvine having reached the summit.

Meticulously, and quite thoroughly, researched over the period of ten years, "Into The Silence" is a comprehensive work of amazing scope which will lead readers into a world they might never have imagined. From the halls of British public schools and universities to the forests, plains, and mountains of the Indian subcontinent and the Himalayas - the "roof of the world"; from the mind-shattering hell of the trenches of World War I's Western Front to the sublime but often stark beauty, and Eastern mysticism, of Tibet and Nepal, this is an unforgettable journey.

My sole criticism, and the reason why I couldn't bring myself to award a fifth star, is the fact that author Davis seemed to have been determined to include every bit of material he gathered, in ten years of research, in the book, burying the reader in unnecessary detail and obscuring the main thrust of the story. For example: his recounting of the 1921 reconnaissance of the Tibetan approaches to Everest is, in my opinion, over-long and over-detailed (this story would make a fine, if smaller, book in itself), and he lingers longer than I felt was necessary, with the inclusion of a greater-than-required amount of quite gory detail, on the horrors of the WW I trench warfare endured by many of the men who would later figure in the British expeditions to Mt Everest. I understand the point that the author was making concerning the effect of the Great War on the men of the British Empire who would later figure in the exploration of Everest, but the battles of The Somme and Passchendaele, the two he lingered on longest, have been well documented in other works; the level of detail to which he went in describing these battles seemed out of place in a book whose primary subject is mountaineering.

Another matter, of no reflection on the final version of the book, is that the galley copy which I read for review did not include the 16 pages of photographs and maps which are included in the published version. Their inclusion would have greatly aided my understanding of the environs of the mountain and the geographic difficulties faced by the members of the various expeditions.

There is no book I’ve read with more pleasure than this account of the context and history of the first three expeditions to climb Mt. Everest. Although providing a comprehensive account of events on the mountain during each attempt, it is distinguished by its scholarly examination of the individual histories and personalities of the main players, and by its consideration of the broader historical context in which the early campaigns on the mountain were conducted. The influence of the recent world war on the expeditions is explored in particular detail through considering the impact of the war on the lives of the individual players in the early Everest saga. This was illuminating, highly effective and deeply moving. The book also illustrates ways in which the early expeditions paid, by both necessity and choice, careful attention to scientific documentation of what was then largely virgin territory to western eyes and explains the extent to which gaining this knowledge figured in the mission of each expedition. The book spans a vast array of pertinent topics, and keeps the reader engaged through a carefully constructed and well-written narrative. This is aided not only by the excellent annotated bibliography, much commented on by others, but also by a series of maps which have the satisfying quality of apparently comprehensively showing the location of all the places named in the text. This is a book that requires close reading, but the reward for doing so is, in my experience, uniquely enjoyable.

excellent research. excellent writing, unfortunately the whole the tone of the book was rather lifeless, ( i know the author intended to do this so the characters could speak to you as they were so the author maintains a stoic journalistic "objectivity" as much as possible which i can appreciate ) but it didn't really make for a wonderful read but still was a pleasant read at times...the characters, however- none of which drew me- im not sure if that is the fault of the author for not drawing out their personalities more or just that these characters were in many ways a product of their times, spoiled, entitled English colonialists at the time when the world was flagged red under the banner of the British Empire but also jaded from the horrors of world war one.
it was definitely not a "powerful" or "moving" read by any stretch( as some times description on the back ) too much superfluous detail esp. about the war. also just lacked passion from the author and the characters. Mallory and his expeditions ,seemed rather soulless...as if they were just walking somnambulists toward their fate, lacking all depth of character, none of which had any spiritual inclination, nor were of any remarkable interest as far as personalities, partly due to their self absorbtion, typical im sure of the colonial superiority complex they held little if any curiosity about their surrounding environment, buddhist culture etc....., just single focused entitled colonial Englishmen out to conquer a mountain using up humans and yaks to the point of death from exhaustion among the way, and oh well.

Into the Silence is a remarkable, sweeping account that is part world history, part adventure story and entirely human. Beginning with their childhood years climbing the British hills through their coming together to climb the world's tallest mountain, Davis traces the lives of a group of men and a nation seeking redemption and meaning after the brutality of the Great War. Painful, graphic depictions of Passchendaele, the Somme and other battles are interwoven with tales of romance and love, creating juxtapositions that convey the true madness of the times. Once the climbing begins the book shifts into unbelievably detailed descriptions of the expeditions, from clothes worn to food eaten and even the time of day the men awoke and began the day's work. Descriptions of camps located on knife-edged ridges with cliffs falling thousands of feet away on either side take one's breath away. Particularly interesting and relevant (given the recent, largest-ever accident on Everest) are the descriptions of the sherpas's roles and attitudes during these first attempts. What may be the book's greatest achievement is the incredible suspense generated in recounting a story to which (besides one unanswered question) we already know the ending.

Into the Silence is a great, sprawling, long book that's the result of years and years of research. It's a history book, a geography book, an adventure book and a novel all wrapped up into a thoroughly engrossing read. The type of book you can curl up with numerous late nights and take your time reading. For page after page you're right up there in the mountains, wearing a woolen coat and mitts and a pair of sturdy boots trying to conquer Everest.

Astonishing detail about the logistics, the history, the cultures, the infighting, the financing, the politics, the marketing and the unbelievable personalities.

Just a magnificent piece of work. One of the very rare times that I want to hand out SIX stars. If you love travel, discovery and mountaineering, you'll hardly find better.

Outstanding and detailed explanation of the important work performed to map a previously unexplored area; fascinating details on the innovative attention of these fearless men to accomplish their mission. The author is simply brilliant, which was one key reason I purchased the book. His work spans many disciplines, and this book demonstrates his amazing writing abilities, open mind, and ability to articulate the historical details making the work and exploration details even more important for us to understand. Highly recommended for those loving history within the last 100 years, tied into a set of true stories of survival of the world's most challenging environment, on/near Everest.

I really enjoyed this book - I think the author does a great job of putting the attempted conquest of Everest into the cultural and political context of the time. It's not designed to be a biography of Mallory nor an account of the final expedition per se, so I think some of the criticisms aired elsewhere are wide of the mark. What I personally found amazing were the characters involved - those were the days when people just headed off into the wilderness for years at a time, leaving their families and civilization behind with scarcely a thought. Nearly all of the participants had really interesting back stories (even the unfortunate Irvine who was only 22) and the almost insouciant way they climbed wearing an extra scarf for warmth was quite incredible but understandable in view of the hardships that they had endured in other expeditions.

My only small cavil was that Conrad Anke's assessment of whether or not Mallory could have made it to the top has changed since 1999 which is where the author leaves it - he now thinks it possible - but as Mallory himself said 'A successful ascent includes making it back down' so maybe it doesn't matter.

Wade Davis' "Into The Silence" tells a fascinating tale of the early attempts at attaining the summit of the highest point on the face of the planet. From the first realization, during the massive effort to survey the Indian subcontinent, that there was a peak far back in the Himalayas that was taller than any other mountain on earth, to the initial reconnaissance of the approaches to Everest and first attempts to climb it, this high place drew the imaginations of mountaineers the world over - and particularly in the British Empire.

The discovery of this ultimate summit so near to the borders of the British Empire, north of India, fired the imaginations of British alpinists and explorers. The British Empire had just endured the inferno of "The Great War", World War I, and many of these men, whose explorations and achievements for the greater glory of the Empire, and their own personal sense of achievement, had been interrupted by the 1914-1918 war, were eager to resume their efforts, and to re-establish the position of the British Empire in the world order.

Backdropping the purely exploratory efforts are the geopolitics affecting the explorations. Political tensions between the British Empire, Russia, and China over the disputed Himalayan borderlands lying between their territories, and religious considerations - given that something like 1/10th of the total population of Tibet, the country through which the early approaches to Everest were made - are in religious orders, and the remainder of the population believed in the presence of mountain demons, spirits, and the holiness of the regions surrounding Everest. By bringing these elements into the tale, and explaining how they affected the purely adventurous aspects of the attempts to climb the highest mountain on Earth, Wade Davis paints a more complete picture of the early explorations of Everest and the events leading up to them over decades of the British Raj than any other book I have read on the subject.

By far the biggest story of the first attempts at Everest was the loss of the man who many considered the finest technical climber of the day, George Leigh-Mallory, during the 1924 expedition. Mallory and his younger (and much less-experienced) climbing partner for the summit attempt, Andrew Comyn "Sandy" Irvine, got tantalizingly close to the summit, certainly closer than any before them, but after a glimpse by fellow expedition member Noel Odell at 12:50 pm on 8 June 1924 as they were apparently approaching the base of the final pyramid of the summit, they were never seen alive again.

The debate over the question of whether Mallory & Irvine reached the summit only to meet their deaths on their return, or whether they died in a retreat after a failed attempt, has raged for over 80 years, and is one of the great legends of Mt Everest. Speculation abounded in the immediate aftermath of the event, and most members of the 1924 expedition were certain that the two men were successful.

Tantalizing clues to the men's ultimate fate turned up over the following decades, even as hundreds more lost their lives on the slopes of Everest. A Chinese member of a joint Sino-Japanese expedition in 1975 reportedly told a Japanese member of the expedition of having seen a body, dressed in early-20th Century clothing, in an area below the summit, but the Chinese climber and a companion were lost two days later - swept off the mountain by an avalanche - before the story could be confirmed.

The amazing discovery of Mallory's body in 1999, by an expedition which had been formed for just that purpose, did little to settle the question. Modern-day experts - men who have touched the summit of Everest themselves and know the difficulty of attaining that lofty (no pun intended) goal, including members of the expedition which discovered Mallory's body - have attested to the impossibility of Mallory and Irvine having reached the summit.

Meticulously, and quite thoroughly, researched over the period of ten years, "Into The Silence" is a comprehensive work of amazing scope which will lead readers into a world they might never have imagined. From the halls of British public schools and universities to the forests, plains, and mountains of the Indian subcontinent and the Himalayas - the "roof of the world"; from the mind-shattering hell of the trenches of World War I's Western Front to the sublime but often stark beauty, and Eastern mysticism, of Tibet and Nepal, this is an unforgettable journey.

My sole criticism, and the reason why I couldn't bring myself to award a fifth star, is the fact that author Davis seemed to have been determined to include every bit of material he gathered, in ten years of research, in the book, burying the reader in unnecessary detail and obscuring the main thrust of the story. For example: his recounting of the 1921 reconnaissance of the Tibetan approaches to Everest is, in my opinion, over-long and over-detailed (this story would make a fine, if smaller, book in itself), and he lingers longer than I felt was necessary, with the inclusion of a greater-than-required amount of quite gory detail, on the horrors of the WW I trench warfare endured by many of the men who would later figure in the British expeditions to Mt Everest. I understand the point that the author was making concerning the effect of the Great War on the men of the British Empire who would later figure in the exploration of Everest, but the battles of The Somme and Passchendaele, the two he lingered on longest, have been well documented in other works; the level of detail to which he went in describing these battles seemed out of place in a book whose primary subject is mountaineering.

Another matter, of no reflection on the final version of the book, is that the galley copy which I read for review did not include the 16 pages of photographs and maps which are included in the published version. Their inclusion would have greatly aided my understanding of the environs of the mountain and the geographic difficulties faced by the members of the various expeditions.

There is no book I’ve read with more pleasure than this account of the context and history of the first three expeditions to climb Mt. Everest. Although providing a comprehensive account of events on the mountain during each attempt, it is distinguished by its scholarly examination of the individual histories and personalities of the main players, and by its consideration of the broader historical context in which the early campaigns on the mountain were conducted. The influence of the recent world war on the expeditions is explored in particular detail through considering the impact of the war on the lives of the individual players in the early Everest saga. This was illuminating, highly effective and deeply moving. The book also illustrates ways in which the early expeditions paid, by both necessity and choice, careful attention to scientific documentation of what was then largely virgin territory to western eyes and explains the extent to which gaining this knowledge figured in the mission of each expedition. The book spans a vast array of pertinent topics, and keeps the reader engaged through a carefully constructed and well-written narrative. This is aided not only by the excellent annotated bibliography, much commented on by others, but also by a series of maps which have the satisfying quality of apparently comprehensively showing the location of all the places named in the text. This is a book that requires close reading, but the reward for doing so is, in my experience, uniquely enjoyable.

excellent research. excellent writing, unfortunately the whole the tone of the book was rather lifeless, ( i know the author intended to do this so the characters could speak to you as they were so the author maintains a stoic journalistic "objectivity" as much as possible which i can appreciate ) but it didn't really make for a wonderful read but still was a pleasant read at times...the characters, however- none of which drew me- im not sure if that is the fault of the author for not drawing out their personalities more or just that these characters were in many ways a product of their times, spoiled, entitled English colonialists at the time when the world was flagged red under the banner of the British Empire but also jaded from the horrors of world war one.
it was definitely not a "powerful" or "moving" read by any stretch( as some times description on the back ) too much superfluous detail esp. about the war. also just lacked passion from the author and the characters. Mallory and his expeditions ,seemed rather soulless...as if they were just walking somnambulists toward their fate, lacking all depth of character, none of which had any spiritual inclination, nor were of any remarkable interest as far as personalities, partly due to their self absorbtion, typical im sure of the colonial superiority complex they held little if any curiosity about their surrounding environment, buddhist culture etc....., just single focused entitled colonial Englishmen out to conquer a mountain using up humans and yaks to the point of death from exhaustion among the way, and oh well.

Mount Everest, at more than 29,000 feet, has always represented the greatest challenge to people of imagination and a sense of adventure. But for a group of British men in the early 1920s, it became an obsession, particularly for George Mallory. He and his compatriots, nearly all of whom were survivors of the dreadful butchery that was known as the Great War, made three attempts to summit Everest. They ultimately failed, with Mallory and his climbing companion, Sandy Irvine, lost on their last try.

This is that story. But it is far more than that. It is also a tale of life in post-Victorian Britain and the British Empire, particularly the Raj. It includes gruesome details of the barbarous and largely pointless Great War. We explore and learn much about the then-unknown world of Tibet, and its mystical lamas. And at last, we follow along as this brave group of men confront the multitude of challenges to try to win the race to the top of the world.

I own both the audio book and the hard cover edition and enjoyed them immensely. I listened to the audio book (26 CDs!) over the course of more than a year, and would occasionally refer to the print version to read over what I'd heard the day before. This was helpful and actually quite enjoyable, as some of the passages can be challenging. As other reviewers have pointed out, this book is in great depth and detail, and covers so much with so many characters, that it's easy to get lost or overwhelmed. But these are part of the experience of this particular book. You don't just get the "story" of Mallory and Irvin - many other books, articles and movies address that quite well. (Suggest the documentary film, The Wildest Dream.) You get the story behind the story, the individual players and their individual stories. In addition to Mallory and Irvin, we get to know Howard-Bury, Wheeler, Bruce, Finch and others. But also among the major characters are the Great War, the British Empire of the early 20th Century (and what might be called the "imperialist attitude"), the people and governments of Tibet and Nepal and, of course, the mountain itself. Even after more than a year, I missed this one when I was done with it. In another few years I'll be reading it again, like visiting old friends, and likely learning something else in the process.

A stunning book worthy of its topic. Wade Davis's writing is exquisite. His research is impeccable. He spent ten years researching and writing this book and it shows in the excellence of the book. I was sorry that there were not better maps on the end papers. But we dragged out the atlas and followed along. My husband and I were both listening to this book and were happy to listen twice when one of us got ahead of the other. Enn Reitel is a wonderful reader. We did feel like we wanted the print book available to look back and sometimes to follow along. The notes and index are extensive and worth taking the time to read. I'm so glad that I picked up this book. It is a treasure.

I find this book fascinating and almost too precise in exhausting every
aspect of WWI, the Raj in India, the history of Tibet, and every aspect
of every mountaineer connected to Everest. I, personally, would have
liked the book better and found it more readable if much of this super-
fluous material had been eliminated. My biggest problem with the book,
which otherwise errs on over-inclusiveness, is that there is no short
biographical list of major characters, no list of climbers in each of the three Everest expeditions, and no way to easily identify and keep
straight the huge number of people involved. I found myself spending
a huge amount of time paging back and forth between the text, and index,
and especially the picture section before I could begin to identify
each character by name and role.

That said, it is worth the read if you are interested in adventuring,
especially the British, during the early 20th century, both mountain-
eering and polar. The contrast between Amundsen and Scott's journey to
the South Pole is especially revealing about the then recklessness of
the British approach of bravery to the point of foolhardiness. I'm
sure this will become the difinitive book on Mallory, whose finding of
his body in 2010, has reawakened interest. I would hope, in future
editions, that the lists I have previously mentioned would be included.

Full disclosure: I have to admit I requested to review this book because it mentions Sandy Irvine, and according to my genealogist cousin we're distantly related to Sandy Irvine (through the Clan Irwin, of Drum), through my paternal grandmother's Scottish immigrant ancestors. I found the book interesting if a bit of a slog in parts, since I'm not a climber myself. It is a great book for anyone interested in the period after the Great War, and for climbers and trekkers with an interest in the history of their passions.

I enjoy reading about WWI, and the Lost Generation, whether it's that of the United States or Great Britain. If history has lessons for future generations, then the experiences of the Lost Generation hold lessons for Generation X and the Millenials.

When I was a high school teacher, years ago, I was shocked that most American students have no clear idea of what WWI was all about. They tend to confuse it with WWII ("isn't that war the one with Hitler and the Nazis?"). Lest you mark this up to the sad state of our public schools I will just say I was teaching in a very good Catholic high school, where parents pay tuition for their kids to get the best quality education they can afford. So, national ignorance of WWI and its lessons for today is very widespread at all socio-economic levels of society.

I can only guess that as the Lost Generation died off in the 1960s and 1970s a lot of that collective memory disappeared with them. Also, most veterans of WWI never talked about their experiences in that war, since it was so much more horrific than any other war we've ever waged. With the upcoming centennial of the start of WWI looming (it began in 1914), I think it's a good time to read and reflect on lessons we can take away from that time.

While it avoids getting too bogged down in the political machinations that led to the war, this book is a very good introduction to how people survived and dealt with the aftermath of the war. It is an epic adventure and a lesson in resilience and courage.

While the

I really enjoyed this book. I listened to the CD-ROM version and when I picked it up initally, wasn't sure I would like it but was soon hooked on the subject matter and the people detailed in the book. Now I'm reading the book to catch anything I missed the first time. Because of this book, the subject of mountaineering, in which I had never expressed an interest in before is now consuming me. I have read several books on Everest since, including several on the 1996 tragedy. From the coverage of WWI, I got a renewed sense of just how terrible it was and what it took to survive it not only physically but mentally. I was introduced to a person that I had never known named George Mallory and found myself rooting for him to make the summit despite knowing that popular belief is that he never made it. The tenacity of early expeditions and the crude equipment they climbed with stands in stark comparison to what climbers have today at their disposal. I also marveled at the politics of the selection committees on who would be asked to make up the expeditions. Instead of strictly looking for the most experienced climbers, the spots on the teams were sometimes filled with "friends" of the committee leading one to imagine that the "good 'ole boy" club was alive and well. I highly recommend this book to anyone and espiecally to those who don't think they want to read about a bunch of Brits trying to climb a mountain. I warn you, the story will suck you in and you will turn into a Everest groupie!

This remarkable book starts by presenting an account of the social and political scene that led up to the first attempts by British mountaineers to conquer Everest, together with a detailed analysis of the various personalities involved. The text then moves on to provide new insights into the complex interplay between the expedition members and their trials and tribulations as they negotiated access to the region, sourced supplies and porters and then faced extreme hardship on their way to base camp. This book provides a unique look into the difficulties they faced and the motivations that drove such young and largely inexperienced men to face the terrors of Everest. Letters between the members, to the committee in London and to various family friends gives further insight to the feelings of the expedition members. This important book should be read by anyone with a keen interest in the early history of Himalayan exploration, drawing as it does on new material and presenting a fresh perspective on the events of the time. Wade Davis is a Master Historian!

One of my favorite books. The story of Mallory is interesting, but what got me was the sweeping background narrative of WWI and the British Empire. There is a story in here about the manual process they used to survey India that is worth the read alone. Davis sews this all together into a page turner that I couldn't put down, then couldn't forget.

I like to listen to audio books in the car on my daily commute and borrowed this one from the library, because I have always been fascinated by the story of Mallory and the incredible expedition to Everest back in the day when the climbers wore tweed jackets and ties, not Gore-Tex and titanium. This book is an impressive accomplishment, that's for sure. I do enjoy the back story of all the characters and their experiences during the war, the details of the English public schools and their class system. But this was a little too much. On 23 CDs, it takes a long time to get through, that's for sure. We're pretty much on CD #5 or 6 before Mallory's name comes up (although when it does, the story of his student days before the war is absolutely fascinating). With the way it gets back and forth to cover the back story of every person associated with the expedition it gets very hard to keep track (since with an audio book, it is not easy to go back to remind yourself who a particular person is). When it finally gets near Everest, every detail of every single day is described in excruciating detail; what they ate, what they wore and the color of the mule they rode. Somewhere on CD #10 they're getting close to Everest -- but only on the first exploratory expedition. Not even half way through yet. I'm sure it works better as a book than as an audio book, and for sure, if you want to know everything there is not know about Everest, this is the book!

After reading "Into the Silence", (as well as during it) - one pauses, inevitably. These pauses gather and intensify, like the mountain, silently looming in the background: cause for reflection. Each of course brings to this silence one's unique experience - with life, with mountains, with death...
As a boy, I once knew a wonderful being and mentor who fought in WW1. I learned about `shrapnel' - he had pieces of them lodged in his body - and `mustard gas' - causing him to breathe with difficulty. He spoke of the `Christmas truce' when boys on either side of the trenches traded beer and coffee before resuming the slaughter. Some soldiers, tired of annihilating an enemy now a little too human, too much like them, had to be relocated. But my friend, who we called "Uncle" Fred, could convey only bits and pieces of his experience. I was too young, and clearly, you "had to be there".
Wade Davis, in his telling, never presumes to know it either - which, to my mind, accounts for his success. It is enough to provide "just the facts, Ma'm" - but what facts they are, and how did he find them? By spending a decade or more of hard work, sleuthing it turns out. This had to be a genius at work, and suggests the company of other stalwarts. Homer, Shakespeare, and Melville come to my mind - such is the potency of this Silence in which the reader participates. And yet the work is "historical" in that things did happen, whether one chose to believe them or not. Davis does not need to invent; he lets the story speak. For how could he, or any of us "know" the Chomolungma (Everest) Silence which Mallory and Irving stepped into, the first of our race to do so? And how to report their final moments, veiled in mystery? And how it felt to be their loved ones?
Again, stepping back, one only imagines how it felt to be one of imperial Britain's "finest" when empire - indeed the world itself - seems to crumble. We of course, with hindsight, can marvel that a figure like Ghandi can be disregarded as a mere nuisance and irritation, even while Indian soldiers gave their lives for whatever it was "the cause" meant to them. For supporting cast there were also the Gurkhas and Sherpas, known to the British as "coolies", who also had a human culture and lives more precious than the British could conceive at the time. They were employed to do the heavy lifting for the grand exposition, subsisting on barley flour while the sahibs enjoyed quail and bully beef when possible, and rode on horseback to get to the target area. Davis does not give short shrift to the heroism these "other" people provided, nor to the fact that many of them, as seekers, lived in caves at high altitudes and survived on meager rations by choice, and not just for the sake of adventure. All becomes part of the greater investigation which Davis undertakes, all become part of the greater story in which the reader is involved.
My only advice in reading Silence is this: one might take a tip from Mallory's instructions on reaching the high altitude. He advised one to breath once for each step, pausing after five steps to rest. The reader might well rest after each sentence, or five, and breathe it in. This the closest most of us will get to standing on the roof of our world and breathing in such rarefied atmosphere, though now one can witness Everest on a flight out of Katmandu from one side of the plane, clouds permitting. I well remember the thrill. But I was not able to see the butterflies at dizzying heights as reported by the climbers in 1924.
Time is needed to appreciate the fullness of this story, one that is all encompassing, and relates even to our current needs and will to conquer, or to surrender, and to discover how to live. All this becomes the ever changing Silence which, to paraphrase Kalu Rinpoche, "is nothing". And because it is nothing, "it is everything". Shakespeare can't beat it, but it includes him, and Homer, and Melville as well.

As a writer/photographer/artist who has travelled to over 40 countries around the world but has never really had much interest in climbing and climbers I found myself pulled deeper and deeper into Wade Davis' hugely detailed book 'Into the Silence.' Not because it was a heart-wrenching, dramatically-charged account of Mallory's quest to conquer Everest, but because it was, as every true traveller knows, an in-depth account into the trials and tribulations of post-war politics, logistics, and personal, as well as public, triumph and tragedy. From the despair of the trenches during World War 1, to the despondency felt post-war a country needed something to lift the human spirits. That 'something' was the hopes of a British team conquering the highest, and most difficult to access, peak known to man... Everest. For the ultimate understanding as to why this book was written first read Jon Krakauer's 'Into Thin Air,' which shows much of the current state of Everest; an exclusive adventurer's vacation playground for all and sundry with 100 K to spend to conquer the mountain. Wade Davis first visited Everest at the time Krakauer depicts in his book and was told stories of the Everest of old, which led him to his own 12 year journey researching virtually Everything Everest in the times of the early expeditions. This book is a fascinating account of, not simply, the attempts to conquer the peak, but, and in my opinion far more fascinating, the huge logistical and political push to simply make it to and document for early cartographic purposes, Everest via ship, train and finally walking from India to the peak of Everest. This book will take time, but it will be time well spent.

* If you like this book also read Wade Davis' 'One River'

Beautifully written and absorbing. In fact, best read I have had in years. It's impossible to separate these intrepid young men from their experiences of WW1 and Mr Davis brilliantly captures the scarcely believable real nighmares they lived through in all its stench and bloody carnage. The characters come to life, in all their heroism but with all their follies and faults, as Mr Davis follows them, in tweeds, woolens and hob nailed boots, from green British Lake District peaks, via the European Alps to the top of the world literally off the map where the most dangerous monster mountain of them all was waiting. How they pushed themselves beyond all known physical and mental limits, and why, makes for an amazing tale, and Mr Davis tells it wonderfully well, vivid word pictures lingering long in the memory. Highly recommend.

This epic history by Wade Davis is slow but riveting reading. The level of research and scholarship is hard to believe. The author also very ably folds in the history of the era and lives of the characters, including especially the horrific story of British efforts in World War I. It is important to follow the story in the accompanying maps, in order to fully appreciate the scope of the courage and accomplishments of these pioneers. What this group attempted and achieved is comparable to the story of the Shackleford expedition ... gutsy to say the least. This is a book I shall not soon forget.

I am a Wade Davis fan. I loved The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic and One River. He has affected how I see ethnobotany and anthropology. But this prodigiously researched, 625 page tome had my eyes glazing over and contained so much information that I lost track of characters and action. It likely would have made a few books, or at least one better-edited book with scholarly articles to back it up. Or part of a series of biographies on members of the Mallory party.

The story of Mallory and the Conquest of Everest is well worth telling. So is the story of World War One. But there is too much content for one book (and I am an avid reader of often wonky detail.) For instance, he describes how Tibet hand John Morris saw a soldier at his side have his leg severed without much loss of blood during the war. The incident does not enter into any other incident in the book and while it might have been one of any incidents causing him to leave France for India, it has limited relevance to the story at hand.

The book would be improved by a schematic showing the full cast of characters, maps of the regions covered and photographs. It would be even more improved by dividing the story into separate books.

As it is, this is a good academic research source with a 48 page annotated bibliography. Alas it is likely to lose most readers who would have wanted to learn about Mallory and his expedition.

After having been in this area of the world around Mount Everest, intensively covered by author Wade Davis, in his book INTO THE SILENCE, I could re-immerse myself, completely, into the intrigue and mystery of this unusual, powerful place. Wade has done the unimaginable, covering the world history which led to the initial exploration of our world's highest peak. He's done it with eloquence, and such exquisite detail. My book EVEREST GRAND CIRCLE was about our expedition climbing all sides the peak, never done before because, now, thousands have reached the summit, however none had seen all faces of the peak which our circumnavigation allowed us. We did this as communist China just opened its doors after having been closed for almost 50 years to the outside world, in the late 70's. Wade's descriptions were spot on as we entered a world much like that of the British explorers in the early 20's, we even had their maps, as none others existed, and they were not drawn to scale in the grey area, in which we ran amuck. My hat is off to Wade, his research, and the immediacy that he writes with, pulling you through history, and right to Everest itself, and into the lives of the explorers. READ IT.

The scope of this book is as challenging to the reader as any climb would be to the most experienced mountaineer. From Queen Victoria's India through the Edwardian era to the ghastly battlefields of Europe and after to the obsession to conquer Everest and regain English supremacy, this book will leave the reader who has the tenacity to finish it, more knowledgable in the history of English society, World War I and mountain climbing. Densely detailed but a compelling read.

A very absorbing read. This is my 3rd Wade Davis book and he hasn't failed me yet. The only thing lacking here was editing. He goes into needless detail at parts. I realize that he performed extensive research but do we have to know what the payment terms for the cinematographer of the 3rd expedition were? Also, the section where he describes the 1st expedition is way too long and interferes with the pace of the book. Besides these minor quibbles I heartily recommend it.

Into the Silence is a masterful piece of research and writing, struck through with fascinating and authoritative insights, and an almost impossibly capacious grasp of history and the mindsets not just of men but of whole nations. I expected Davis to write well about the mountain, and he delivers brilliantly on that. I was less prepared for the thorough and unvarnished evocation of the war and the multiple traumas that flowed from it, and for his fluid yet acute capture of the Bloomsbury Group, the colleges, the intrigues, and the politics of the times. His sense of the class and social milieu is absolutely bang on. As to the expeditions themselves, Davis is critical but respectful, thoroughly authentic, the narrative delivered with such confidence and certainty (the result of superb research, obviously) that as a reader, I counted him as among the climbers every step of the way. He is is not the slightest bit obtrusive, yet so observant it seems impossible he was not actually on each of the voyages he describes. To me as a reader, no greater satisfaction would be than for Davis to have an opportunity to compare notes with Mallory himself, as absurd as that sounds. His is a brave book, absolutely worthy of the man and his memory, and were they ever to meet, it would be as rare equals.

This is the most comprehensive book I've read since I was in grad school. The level of detail is both good and bad. There are pages and pages of details about every aspect of climbing Everest - WWI, English school system, Royal Geographic Society, the life history of the ship's captain, and on and on and on. There are so many names, dates, events and people that it can sort of blur together. Sometimes I need to read a section again, because my mind was wandering while I was paging through details that didn't really seem to matter.

The WWI battle description (how many pages?) was horrific. It was hard to read in places. It wasn't bad, but oh was it bloody and depressing.

Mr. Davis is a talented writer, and obviously poured his heart and soul into this book. On the other hand, I've been reading it for at least six months, and am 1/3 of the way through.

I was totally enthralled from end to end by the extraordinary scope of detailed material, by Wade Davis' clarity and focus, and by the calibre and quality of his writing style which sustained my interest throughout. If it took ten years to research, write and edit, it is understandable in light of the voluminous details which enlighten rather than weigh it down.
I am a hiker, not a climber, but I am fascinated by these other worldly mountaineers. I read Into Thin Air many years ago which I enjoyed but Into The Silence is in another league in the annals surrounding Everest. Having read this opus, I may never read another book on climbing which is so informative and beautifully written.
A key to the book's appeal is the historical arc which Wade Davis traces from the horrors of The Great War to the Everest climbing teams of 1921-24. The vivid insights into life and death in the trenches of France are searing and heart-rending and set the stage for an emotional involvement between the reader and the supermen tackling the world's highest and, at the time, least known mountain.
Tony Stikeman, Ottawa, Canada

What Wade Davis has done is a remarkable feat for a non-fiction writer: to tell the story of a mountain and the men who climbed it in such a way as to weave together not just their personal lives, but the entire ethos of an Empire seeking to rise from the ruins of the first world war. The stories of the brutality of war these men endured, and indeed emerged from as heros, reveals the psychological landscape the men who climbed Everest, how they lived - and how some died - on a quest to overcome the very elements.

Davis recounts how in their journies to Everest these former soldiers encountered and employed the Himalayan peoples, including monks, whose faith in Tibetan Buddhism gave them a sense of the meaning of life so very different and yet somehow resonant with the British who would climb a mountain not for enlightenment, but for the empire's glory.

It's a beautiful book, told by a master storyteller at the height of his powers.

Other reviewers have given great overviews of the book, so I won't repeat that information. You do not have to be a mountaineer to appreciate Into the Silence. I greatly enjoyed this book, and learned so much from this book, which seamlessly weaves together such a diverse range of topics, that I have purchased a couple more of Wade Davis's books. By the way, one added bonus: in these days of 90- to 100-degree days, I have looked forward to coming home from work to read about subzero temps and cold, howling winds!

Into the Silence is a beautiful and moving history of a very complicated series of events. I particularly appreciated the way the author contextualized the stories of these men, with accounts of their upbring and youth, and then their respective experiences in the Indian Army or as soldiers in World War I. The book so clearly reminds
readers that the participants were no strangers to terrible hardship and death, and that the Everest expedition was framed in the language of warfare, that still made sense to Britons even after the horrors of the battlefield. And although he survived the war, Mallory becomes yet another fallen hero of the Lost Generation.

This might sound silly, but it's going to take me a few days to 'get over' this book; there was so much to take in. I feel pangs of sadness when I imagine Odell repeatedly going back to Camp VI looking for some sign of his friends. Or the photos of Sandy Irvine...always smiling directly into the camera. Davis's book also brought back memories of my own mountain adventures, hiking in Kashmir and Ladakh in the 1980s. I've spent a few cold nights at high altitudes and I can't imagine doing it for weeks on end. What these men endured is almost impossible to believe.

I've read dozens of books on expeditions to Everest, Kanchenjunga, K-2, Aconcagua, the Matterhorn, Mount Blanc, the Needles of Chamonix, Whitney, and more, as well as books about Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen, and Peary, and classic works about World War I: Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory, Martin Middlebrook's The First Day on the Somme, Graves's Goodbye to All That. Still more: Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet, Mark Girouard's The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman, Andrew Birkin's J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys. It was as though this 60 years of reading was in preparation for Into the Silence, a book as lucid and compelling as any novel--and so well written. It was a book I could put down--because I didn't want it to end. And when it ended, I was in tears--remarkable for the telling of a story whose outcome one knows.

Into the Silence

I loved this book so much mid way through I sent a copy to my best mate and to the guy who sits next to me at work. We compare notes, mull over with a pint and compare the previous night's read as if each is a member of the expedition! It took me three attempts to plough on beyond the anger of the trenches, but has helped to apply some deeper perspective that I had only scratched at on a trip to Vimy Ridge and Albert a couple of years back. It leads to pouring over maps and the ironic armchair luxury of google earth. Didn't really want it to finish and excited by the annotated bibliography which should see me through the next 10 years. So vivid it makes you feel guilty to sit reading in a soft chair. Quite simply the most rewarding and fulfilling book I have ever read.

In the early years of the twenty first century it is difficult to realize that one hundred years ago, we were on the brink of the greatest and most horrendous war known in history. Also, a century ago, no European had ever even gotten to the even the lower slopes of Mount Everest.

When I started this book, I assumed that it would be primarily about climbing a mountain and the effort of George Mallory and his team to plan, supply, acclimatize and climb the highest mountain on the planet. Yes, that is all in here, but there is so much more that intelligent individuals in the 21st century (I like to flatter myself) never even thought about. One century ago, there had been no documented climb to an elevation higher than about 24,600 feet above sea level. There had never been a sleeping campsite ever established above 23,430 feet. The highest recorded altitude by a human was 26,500 feet achieved by French meteorologist Gaston Tissandier in a balloon in the 19th century. During that flight, Tissandier passed out and when he came to he found that he was deaf and his two companions were dead. Why would anybody assume that climbing a mountain over 27,000 feet would be an easy hike?

What we find in this book is that the actual climbing was minor compared to all of the other things that had to be taken care of before even thinking of buying sleeping bags. For one thing, there was that war. Some of the most accomplished mountain climbers in the world were involved in that war and most did not survive it. Then there was the English colony of India. England was an ally of Russia, but Russia was having their own internal problems with a revolution going on. England had fears that Russia was looking lustfully toward India. It was the hope of the British Foreign Office that the mountain countries north of India would act as a buffer to prevent Russia from moving into the British colony. China was not a threat at that time, but England considered "giving" Tibet to China in order to widen that buffer with Russia.

Now you know a small bit that I, at least, had no idea was involved. England did not want to upset the Tibet government, the Dali Lama or the Pasha Lama, so they discouraged any expedition into the sacred mountains of Tibet.

I just spent a week reading Into The Silence, by Wade Davis. Every day, it was what I looked forward to doing. It is a great book. It surely proves the statement that truth can be stranger than fiction. These men, survivors of the Great War, were the last of a generation of Imperial Englishmen. That they failed on Mt. Everest was probably inevitable, given their general indifference to supplemental oxygen, their old-fashioned equipment and their ignorance of the effects of lack of oxygen on the human body. But they went up and down that mountain countless times and, amazingly, seemed to enjoy not just the challenge, but the beauty of it. Mr. Davis makes you feel the chill, the loneliness, the deadliness, the magnificence. His careful descriptions of their backgrounds and their experiences during the war reveal why the top of the world called. It was a place where the rules were clear, after years of careless death. My thanks to Wade Davis for a wonderful read. LD

I don't have anything to add to the great reviews of this book other than a recommendation of the book Ghosts of Everest: The Search for Mallory & Irvine to have in parallel with this one. It offers up the forensics for the conclusion of the 1924 expedition story. Along with good images of the British climbing party participants and the (literal) lay of the land.

My life is so busy it took me three months to read, but I would have liked to devour it at a single stretch -- it's a page-turner. I finished it two weeks ago, but every day since then, passages from the book continue to pop into my mind. It brings not just Everest, but a whole era alive. This book is nothing less than a social history of the British elite at the twilight of Empire.

Wade Davis should be congratulated on what is his finest work so far, one that breaks him out of the mould of voodoo, ethnobotany, and exotic cultures, and projects him into the front ranks of historical authors. There is much to admire in this work - its graceful and clear prose, endless fascinating detail, and moving descriptions of heroic acts in impossible circumstances, whether in the trenches of the Great War or on the flanks of Everest. But what I find most impressive is its scholarship, so massive and detailed that it turns the annotated bibliography he includes into an interesting little book in its own right. If only all historians did such thorough research, and could weave together so skillfully and entertainingly the threads derived from their inquiries.

I remember reading a book about Mallory when I was a kid. I was pretty fascinated with it. Years later reading this book, I just couldn't get over how much it bogged down with logistics, World war 1, and other things. I think this book would be a good match for a real history buff. But for folks more casual then that, I don't think they'll enjoy it.

Excellent book. the backstory on the time, the place, and the climbers added to the story.
It was interesting to read about the logistics and complications of even getting to the bottom of the big mountain. This book is much more than a simply a thrill ride to the top.

I picked up this book after returning from Tibet and Everest last year, so it had special significance to me. The details described by Davis of the people and journies involved are fascinating. He understands that mountaineering is much more than climbing, the backgrounds and personalities of those involved are an important part of the story. Not only is this one of the best mountaineering books I have read, it is one of the best books I have read.

Wade Davis' account of Mallory's quest to summit Everest is spellbinding! It transports us to another time and place. The men that challenged Everest were primarily survivors of WWI. Their experiences in the Great War shape their lives and this lies at the core of their assaults on Everest. This is a tremendously detailed, well researched account. Great Read!!

Hard to add to what everyone else has written, but I thoroughly recommend Davis' book for all the adventure folks out there, trying to feed their own rat. I also highly recommend Davis' annotated bibliography--tour de force in its own right.

The book also made me wonder what the world lost with Irvine: what other brilliant inventions would he have come up with, if he'd lived.

More than a biographical sketch of Mallory or brief account of the first three Everest expeditions, this well researched account provides a comprehensive yet enthralling story of the first attempts in tackling the highest mountain in the world. As an anthropologist, Wade Davis brings a great perspective on both the British climbers as well as the Tibetan people and culture. The story is sad, exciting, and inspiring and I am already look forward to rereading it.

I very much enjoyed this book and have only a few complaints. First, couldn't better maps have been provided? I had to pull out another book to use as a reference for the author's habit of writing about locations that were not to be found on either of the maps in the front or back of the book. If an auther feels naming a location is important, then the reader should have a source in the book to see where that place actually is. Second, the photo section has no chronological order; it is as if the photos where thrown against a wall to see which stuck in what place. Further, on page 347, the author describes the eight men of the 1921 expedition posing for the only photo taken of the entire expedition party high on the mountian. "Mallory, pipe in hand, sits stiffly in a camp chair beside Wheeler, and hovering over both is Howard-Bury, dapper in tie, waistcoat, and checkered coat." Unfortunately, the only 1921 group expedition photo included in the book photo section shows both Wheeler and Mallory standing while Howard-Bury sits in a camp chair so the author's words on page 347 apparently describe a photo not included in the photo section. Why was the photo the author described not included? Finally, the author's obsession with alleged homosexual activity permeates the book all the way through the annotated bibliography and is very distracting and disturbing yet adds nothing to my understanding of these men and their motivations. The reference to Mallory's alleged homosexual encounter appears to based solely on a letter from the other young man who may have been bragging falsely or engaged in wishful thinking. The author's choice to push a homosexual theme into the story serves only to embarrass the families of very brave men.

When Hemingway showed the early manuscript of the Old Man and the Sea to friends, many said it had a "mysterious quality not visible in his earlier work". That mysterious quality to which they referred in the Old Man and the Sea was and is the thread of great books, books that shake us and move us and transport us, but leave us without an explanation for how it was done. Into the Silence is one of those books. You leave the experience with a thousand anecdotes, each riveting and inspiring; you leave with details and history that inform your worldview; but most importantly you leave changed. You leave high on the mystery of what has happened to you.

I am over 300 pages into it so far and even though it's a chore, will most likely finish since I will generally will if I get in over 100 pages. I have read probably 40 books of mountaineering adventures so have many to compare with. This is very tedious with boring details right down to what meals were consumed. Once in awhile it gets interesting for a few paragraphs but then it gets back to super slow. I have a hard time reading more than 10 pages in an evening. I usually read a number of books at a time. I started one I've had around shortly after starting this one, that someone gave me as a gift- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. They're about the same size books and it's interesting that I'm further into the BB book even though mountaineering is one of my favorite topics in reading material. I would recommend a person have a notebook to keep track of all the names and places. There are so many you can't keep them all straight. Also, some details aren't necessary like details of people's sexual conduct in their younger years. Who needs to bring that up about people 100 years later.

I've never climbed a mountain or traveled in a submarine. But, I'd rather read a book about either of those adventures than watch football on TV. What I like most is a book that leaves me feeling like I've been there. In that realm, this book delivers the goods.

and is a book I could not put down, cannot stop raving about, am always giving away as gifts to friends
(who then become equally inspired and entranced). Beautiful, poignant, horrifying WWI precursor tales
lead to intricate accounts of the expeditions themselves, carefully drawn at every level from the technical
to the personal to the "Great-Game"-diplomatic, and all this against a backdrop of well-researched Tibetan
culture that is as refreshingly authentic as juniper smoke-offerings.

This is one of the best books I've read in years. I was almost as awed by the storytelling as by the story itself, and its fascinating context -- World War I, Tibet, heroism, imperialism, and this amazing generation who went into the unknown in tweed jackets with Shakespeare in the pocket. I know zero about mountaineering -- when I bought the book I had Mallory confused with Hillary -- but I was enthralled and moved from first page to last.

Ten years of writing and research has paid off immensely well for Davis, and this book stands as a hefty testament to the indomitable human spirit both in its style and vivid meticulousness. This is the book all armchair mountaineers have been waiting for and it trumps anything else that has been written about the early attempts on Everest. It's a highly rewarding read and each anecdotal alley enriches the narrative and brings the reader to a better understanding of the post WWI zeitgeist. A tremendous accomplishment by Davis and a fulfilling reading experience that will leave you feeling as if you are sucking air at well over 8,000M. Highly recommended.

Davis' book "Into the Silence" is a must read for any adventurer, climber, alpinist, mountaineer, and outdoor enthusiast. It tells the story of the first expedition to attempt Everest, a story rich in character, integrity, and spirit, that sews a seed of inspiration and awe for so many proceeding expedition teams. Any one who has any interest in traveling to the Himalaya or is interested to learn more about the sheer human triumph and resilience endured to attempt this climb owes it to themselves to learn of the rich stories of Mallory's teams as never before articulated with such resonance as in Davis' epic.

unfortunately the climbing doesn't really occupy much of the book. We hear about WWI, the British, Britain as a superpower, Tibet, and the biographies of EVERY single person mentioned in the story. It's slow going at first--I felt like I was reading a high school textbook on WWI at times. After about 100-150 pages it gets better. The parts on Everest are just awesome--richly detailed, absorbing, awe-inspiring, heroic. Truly fascinating reading. This book is meticulously researched, maybe too much so. I understand that the War totally changed the history of the world and Great Britain in particular, and that without the war the expedition to Everest might not have occurred. I understand all of that, but I could've gotten by on less description. I guess I was expecting more of a "Into Thin Air" sort of book, which this is not. It's more of a history book that happens to include the expedition to Everest. However, the expedition itself is awesome--if you can get through the historical research, or happen to love history, you will love this book. It is extremely well written and authoritative.

Very good read. If you like history and like mountaineering you will like this book. A great view of the politics of the Great Game and the astonishing difficulties the mountaineers of the day had to contend with

A masterpiece. I loved this book so much. I was very glad that it was such a thick book. I was sad when I had finished it. It reads like a novel, but historical. Poetic at times always hugely insightful.If you love history and adventure this is a book for you.

The book is a terrific mini history of the tragedy of ww1 and the British conquest (or attempt) of Everest afterwards. It is well researched and thought provoking. I would advise the reader to copy the maps and keep them handy otherwise the one can get lost. It is however not a simple read.

There's tours-de-force and then there's this book. I've never read anything with such depth of research and the writing is equal to it. This is as close as we're going to get to those early expeditions leading up to the fateful one in 1924 in which Mallory and Irvine disappeared. A most worthy addition to exploration literature.

Absolutely amazing story of real adventure perfectly captured by Wade Davis. The two factors together (story and writer) made this the best book I have ever read.

Book arrived a week late and slightly damaged though no marking on the outside of the packaging. Book binding was poor as most pages out of alignment.

I never knew how vitally important the first World War was in the history of Mt. Everest. Never have I read a book so beautifully written that taught me so much about an era of which I knew so little. It took me a while to get through it, but I recommend this book to everybody. We are ordering more copies!

This is an awesome, thorough history of very interesting times and remarkable people.
The way I see it, if they can spend 3 months exploring unknown lands and risking everything, I can spend 3 months in my easy chair learning about it. Excellent book and highly recommended.

This is a hard book to review because of the mix of good and bad. Davis spent ten years writing and a lifetime reading, the amount of research is epic, it's probably the definitive book on the first three Everest expeditions 1921-24, no small thing considering so many other books. Yet most of the book describes background and logistics with not much time on the mountain by comparison. We learn about the history of the people involved (dozens), history of Tibet, history of WWI, trips to India, trips to Tibet, trips across Tibet, trips back from Tibet. It is highly researched and often boring by its nature since so much happens that is banal. The famous 1924 expedition in which Mallory dies is well told but accounts for only about 50 of 576 pages, or less than 10% of the book. On the other hand there are parts that are really interesting, such as the WWI biographies, and Davis' central theme that the wars silent but ever present influence on the expedition ultimately decided its fate.

The annotated bibliography is equally epic, nearly 50 pages long of recommendations for further reading, it's an impressive Everest Geek-fest, probably the best bibliography of its type and worth owning for alone. I'm not sure who to recommend this book to, certainly anyone who has been to Everest, or with an interest in Himalayan climbing history. If your looking for an introduction to Mallory or a gripping mountain adventure, it may be a long hard climb.

I thought the story was very good. The detail was nice. Unless your geography is very good, it's hard to keep track of the story without a map. There are many characters also, hard to keep track of everyone.

This is a great book, and I mean that in every sense of the word. I believe it will still be read in a hundred years as THE classic account of that era and of that endeavor. The account of WWI alone is worth reading this book.

The history covered by the book is detailed and long. If you think you're reading a climbing book, that only occupies the last chapters of the book. A thoroughly researched book and fascinating to read.

In addition to the excellent descriptions of geography and sociological background of the times. Wade Davis vividly recreates the three quests by Mallory, his fellow climbers and huge supporting staff, setting their amazing exploits in sweeping historical context from Britain's 19th century imperial ambitions to the war that shaped a generation. Much of the book deals with ordeals and adventures during the month long treks through Tibet, necessary to reach the starting camp. Based on more than a decade of prodigious research, this rich narrative creates a detailed portrait of some remarkable men and their extraordinary times.

One of the most detailed evocations of the attempts on Everest by Mallory. This masterpiece recreates the mood and the need for glory after the disaster of the first world war that led to the expeditions. The book is incredibly detailed and this magnificent piece of history is the most vivid and fervent example of how painstaking research can be made into a real piece of literature.

When I started to read "Into the Silence" I was hoping for a good book about trying to climb Mt. Everest. Which I defintely got from reading this wonderful book. What I did not expect to get, was a great book about WWI as well, which I also got.

I recently read "Finding Evertt Ruess" and walked away from that book a bit more confused about the subject than I would have liked. I als did not like how the book seemed to raise more questions than answers. That is not the case with "Into the Silence."

The author did an amazing amount of research on different people and events, in addition to info on Mallory and his attempt to conquer Everest. I especially like the end and the description of how they finally found his body.

The book is long and rich in detail, but a story on so many levels. Reading Into the Silence reminded me of reading biographies by Robert Massie where you not only learned about the main subject but learned about many other people and related events.

This is quite a read and I will have to find some more books written by Wade Davis.

I am interested in both mountain climbing and World War I, but I could not get into this book. After multiple false starts, I pushed myself through hoping that its narrative would eventually become apparent. Perhaps it is because I have not read enough about WWI, but I could not discern a clear idea. I felt like I was reading a series of names and places listed solely to ensure that all were present, but without clear linkages or purpose.

Perhaps best for historical scholars, and not for the casual reader.

I love Wade Davis' writing. I've never listened to any of his books, only read them, and when I discovered " Into the Silence" I was very excited. Maybe it is me but , 2 disks into listening to this book I had to stop. It may be the accent but nothing the reader says sticks. I have to listen to it three times in order to get it. The reader is a bit of a mono-tone and sadly I am will not be able to listen all the way through. Guess it is back to reading.

Into The Silence weighs in at half the length of War and Peace and is on the same huge scale. The unimaginable killing and maiming in the 1914-18 trenches of the Western Front in the words, the descriptions of some of the British officers and medics who lived through the daily slaughter. It takes these Brits of the old school, plus an occasional Canadian and Australian, and tells the story of how between 1921 and 1924, having survived against the odds the trenches, went on to attempt to climb Everest, which in those days lay weeks beyond the railhead over unknown Tibet.

A compulsive page-turner, I emerged from days of engrossed isolation in the exploding trenches, lying in a hurricane-blown old tent on the North Col at 23,000 ft about to be ripped 10,000 ft below onto the such-and-such glacier. I had frostbite and had lost my icepick.
The foreground is the stuffy world of upper-class Cambridge, London and the Raj of the first two decades of the 20th century. The climbers of Everest with at most feeble sprays of oxygen were the same boys, now disillusioned, who were mowed down, blown up, and bayoneted in the trenches, who built and were running the world’s greatest empire.

Into The Silence is among the great books already of the 21st Century, a hundred years on from the events it relates, superbly, coolly put together and written by Wade Davis, today a Prof of Anthropology at UBC Vancouver. Davis, a well-known the store explorer, was for many years the Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society in Washington DC. If you look him up on TED you will find a couple of fast, chatty talks on the disappearing worlds of the Tropics, the Deserts, the Arctic. Five golden stars.

Into the Silence is the story of Mallory's attempts at climbing Mt. Everest. I found it to be a very entertaining and historical account of these attempts. The caveat of reading a story like this is the slight disappointment of knowing in advance how the story ends. I particularly enjoyed the detailed descriptions of the logistics of these attempts. Before reading this book the thought of climbing Mt. Everest would have been daunting enough, but to have attempted it then when just getting to the mountain seemed next to impossible showed what an amazing feat it was that they got as close as they did. Everything from permission to enter the country (Tibet) to the hiring of locals as porters to carry equipment, food and fuel to the site when they (in the first attempt) didn't even really know how to approach the mountain. It may have been best that they didn't really realize that what they were attempting was next to impossible. I generally rate books on how well spent I feel my time was in reading them and I enjoyed this book. If you buy it I hope you enjoy it as well and thank you for taking the time to read my review.

It is all too easy for us to turn the men who sought to climb Everest into romantic heros. Davis' stunning and groundbreaking book reveals that they were not superhuman, not Marvel comic stars but flesh and blood men forged in the trenches of the Great War. I've never read such gripping psychological portraits set against the traumatic background of WW1. It simultaneously helped me discover these men as real human beings, and at the same time gave me great respect for what they accomplished - even though they did not reach the summit in the end. Wrenching, brilliant, edifying.

This is one of the great stories of exploration, up there with The Worst Journey in the World. The focus is on Mallory and his disappearance on the way to the summit. But Davis takes you there by way of the experience of The Great War and how it affected the men's views of death; by way of British castes and classes in the public schools and the government and the clubs--the Royal Geographic Society, the Alpine Club, etc. At first I felt I would drown in the detail, but Davis is a skilled writer and the detail is essential. You move through the 1921 expedition scouting routes to Everest (let alone up it); the 1922 expedition where the summit was attempted; and the 1924 expedition where Mallory and Irvine vanished into mist and myth. Useful companion pieces: a book of Capt. Norton's diaries and watercolors and sketches from 1922 and 1924, and Noel's documentary film, beautifully restored, of the 1924 expedition. I recommend this book very highly! (Be warned: one of the maps has North at the bottom of the page. It is deliberate, but confusing.)

I bought this book after hearing a lecture by Prof. Davis, and discovered to my immense delight that the book is every bit as wonderful as was the telling of Davis' story. The momentous history is so colorfully brought to life with Davis' very fine prose. Agony, tragedy, heroism, honor and beauty all envelope the reader. Such a beautiful effort...such a story!

Into the Silence is a stunning historical read that offers new insights into the unspeakable horrors of World War I and the early attempts to climb Mount Everest in the 1920s. I could not put this book down and look forward to reading other works by the author.

I loved this book. Wade Davis has artfully woven the history of the Great War with the conquest of Everest, two seemingly very different subjects. His writing style is very captivating. I will look forward to reading others of his books.