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Seppelliti Nel Cielo: La Straordinaria Storia Degli Scalatori Sherpa Nel Giorno Più Drammatico Della Tragedia Del K2 (2013)

by Peter Zuckerman(Favorite Author)

4.01 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Mondadori

review 1: I loved "Into Thin Air" and this was a story similar in plot -- adrenaline junkies with tons of money doing something crazy like climbing five miles into the air; overcrowding in key points of the climb; people putting their pride above common sense and continuing to try for the summit way later than the agreed upon "turnaround time"; the weather taking a nasty turn and bad judgment is used; horrific deaths and injuries begin knocking off people one by one; etc. And it turns out that K2, while technically a little shorter than Everest, is much more technical of a climb and has a climber death rate of almost 30% (Russian Roulette, by comparison, is 17%). There is a certain morbid fascination with reading about these types of tragic disasters, and you can't help but feel a l... moreittle dramatic irony for the first half of the story. All of these people, so excited to scale a mountain, some of whom are heading to their grisly demises. Unlike most mountaineering stories, however, the central figures of this book are two high-altitude workers, commonly called porters or Sherpas (even though as the book points out, these men are doing way more than just carrying crap around and are climbing just as much as the "mountaineers"; plus, Sherpa is a nationality, not a job description. Who knew?). I appreciate when historical events are retold from unique or overlooked perspectives, and hearing about this expedition from the points of view of Chhiring Dhorje and Pasang Lama makes you realize how disenfranchised the "Sherpa" profession has been for the last 100 years. Without "Sherpas", we would never have climbed to the top of any of the 8000 m peaks, and yet it's fairly typical of the foreign mountaineers to treat their porters like expendable dogs. You gain a new respect for high-altitude workers after reading this book, and I deeply appreciated the amount of research and interviewing that went into this.The book is well-written, well-paced, and usually explains the mountaineering lingo in a helpful way. A few spots are uneven or slightly confusing, but on the whole extremely riveting and slick.
review 2: An amazing, but tragic, story. This book sets up the incident with a sweeping history of Nepal and the Sherpas--including socio-economics, folklore, weather patterns, and religion. The writers do an exceptional job explaining the realities and horrors of climbing K2--and climbing dangerous mountains in general--without breaking the narrative.The book is fast paced, well researched, and fascinating--even if it does have a sad ending for many of the climbers. Highly recommend. less

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