Rope Boy is the story of Dennis Gray, a young lad from Leeds who gets his first taste of rock at age eleven, and goes on to become a prominent figure in the UK climbing scene for decades to come.Gray's climbing career began with the 'Bradford Lads', climbing in Yorkshire, Scotland and Wales, exploring classic crags such as Clogwyn Du'r Arddu, tentatively venturing into an exciting new game, and inspired by the pioneering

Essays from the Edge gathers fifty years of selected writing by Dennis Gray, one of British climbing's most influential voices. These twenty-one essays, spanning one of British mountaineering's most exciting periods, provide a compelling narrative of a life studying the art of climbing and of living it first-hand on the cliffs and mountains of the world in the company of some of the sport's most colourful characters of the last century.Vivid portraits anch...

Entrenched in a conflict over slave labor, the industrialized North and slave-powered South of the mid 1800's became entangled in the only war to be waged between Americans on U.S. soil. The Civil War, infamously known as the bloodiest military conflict to date, engaged three million Americans, claiming the lives of over half a million.The long march from secession to Southern Reconstruction comes to vivid life with The Civil War Collection, a riveting eight hour documentary that l...

Biotechnology revolutionized traditional plant breeding programs. This rapid change produced new discussions on techniques and opportunities for commerce, as well as a fear of the unknown. Plant Development and Biotechnology addresses the major issues of the field, with chapters on broad topics written by specialists. The book applies an informal s

Edmund Hillary – A Biography is the story of the New Zealand beekeeper who climbed Mount Everest. A man who against expedition orders drove his tractor to the South Pole; a man honoured around the world for his pioneering climbs yet who collapsed on more than one occasion on a mountain, and a man who gave so much to Nepal yet lost his family to its mountains.The author, Michael Gill, was a close friend of ...

'Everest by fair means - that is the human dimension, and that is what interests me … In reaching for the oxygen cylinder, a climber degrades Everest … a climber who doesn't rely on his own strength and skills, but on apparatus and drugs, deceives himself. In May 1978 Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler became the first climbers in history to reach the summit of Mount Everest without the use of supplementary oxygen - an event which made international headlines and permanently altered the fu...

The first man to set foot on the summit of Everest, the man who led a team of tractors to the South Pole, the man who jetboated up the Ganges from the ocean to the sky has, for the first time, gathered all the remarkable adventures of a long life into one volume. But there is more to Edmund Hillary than this. He is also the man who repaid his debt of fame to the Himalayas by inaugurating a programme of building schools, clinics, airstrips and bridges in Nepal. With his still active support...

As he teetered on a narrow rock ledge a yak's bellow short of the stratosphere, with a rubber mask strapped to his face, a pair of mittens the size of a sealion's flippers, and a drop of two kilometres below him, it's fair to say Mark Horrell wasn't entirely happy with the situation he found himself in.He was an ordinary hiker who had only read books about mountaineering, and little did he know when he signed up for an organised trek in Nepal with a group of elderly ladies that ten...

On the night of 10-11 May 1996, eight climbers perished in what remains the worst disaster in Everest's history. Following the tragedy, numerous accounts were published, with Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air becoming an international bestseller. But has the whole story been told?A Day to Die For reveals the full, startling facts that led to the tragedy. Graham Ratcliffe, the first British climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest twice, was a first-hand witness, ha...

An expert mountaineer cracks Everest’s most intriguing mystery – did Mallory and Irvine reach the summit before they perished on its slopes?On the 6th June 1924, mountaineers George Mallory and Sandy Irvine perished in their attempt to reach the summit of Everest.Obsessed by uncovering what happened, in 1993 Graham Hoyland became the 15th Englishman to climb Everest. His investigations led to the finding of Mallory’s body; it will be his evidence that will recover Irvine’s....

**'He is the David Attenborough of mountaineering . . . Bonington's most personal memoir yet' The Times'This is a compelling tale of fortitude and endurance' The Sunday Times**Chris Bonington is Britain’s best-known climber, having spent a lifetime among the world’s highest and wildest mountains.In the 1960s, he made the first British ascent of the north face of the Eiger. In the 1970s, he led some of the most important fi...

Don Whillans has an iconic significance for generations of climbers. His epoch-making first ascent of Annapurna's South Face, achieved with Dougal Haston in 1970, remains one of the most impressive climbs ever made - but behind this and all his other formidable achievements lies a tough, recalcitrant reality: the character of the man himself.Whillans carried within himself a sense of personal invincibility, forceful, direct and uncompromising. It gave him sporting superstar status ...