"When Silvia's mother called her home to Peru, she knew something finally had to give. A Latinx hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately, she was hanging by a thread. She was deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she'd suffered as a child. Her visit to Peru would become a turning point in her life. Silvia started climbing. Something about the brute force required for...

"Piolet d'Or recipient Graham Zimmerman is widely recognized as one of the most talented climbers of the twenty-first century, yet one of his greatest accomplishments has been learning to pursue his love of adventure and climbing while crafting a meaningful life grounded in responsibility and purpose. In this engaging and provocative memoir, Zimmerman, who learned to climb in Washington's Cascade range, maintains a delicate balancing act: appreciating...

At the beginning of his memoir Life Lived Wild, Adventures at the Edge of the Map, Rick Ridgeway tells us that if you add up all his many expeditions, he's spent over five years of his life sleeping in tents: "And most of that in small tents pitched in the world's most remote regions." It's not a boast so much as an explanation. Whether at elevation or raising a family back at sea level, those years taught him, he writes, "to distinguish matters of...

A celebrated mountaineer and author searches for meaning in great adventures and explorations, past and present. David Roberts, "veteran mountain climber and chronicler of adventures" (Washington Post), has spent his career documenting voyages to the most extreme landscapes on earth. In Limits of the Known, he reflects on humanity's-and his own-relationship to extreme risk. Part memoir and part history, this book tries to make sense of why so many...

"The story of Jordan Romero, who at the age of 13 became the youngest person ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest. At age 15, he reached the summits of the world's 7 highest mountains"--

"One slip, one false move, one missed toehold, and you're dead. Alex Honnold, the #1 free solo climber in the world, chose the route known as Freerider on Yosemite's El Capitan, a series of pitches so hard that it's newsworthy when someone free climbs it with a rope. No one had ever 'free soloed' it before; only a few people have ever even contemplated it. That four-hour climb on June 3, 2017, was, simply, one of the boldest feats in human history....

"On June 3, 2017, as seen in the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo, Alex Honnold achieved what most had written off as unattainable: a 3,000-foot vertical climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, without a rope or harness. At the time, only a few knew what he was attempting to do, but after topping out at 9:28 am, having spent just under four hours on this historic feat, author Mark Synnott broke the story for National Geographic and the world...