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Author: Peter H. Hansen Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674074556 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 382
Book Description
The history of mountaineering has long served as a metaphor for civilization triumphant. Once upon a time, the Alps were an inaccessible habitat of specters and dragons, until heroic men—pioneers of enlightenment—scaled their summits, classified their strata and flora, and banished the phantoms forever. A fascinating interdisciplinary study of the first ascents of the major Alpine peaks and Mount Everest, The Summits of Modern Man surveys the far-ranging significance of our encounters with the world’s most alluring and forbidding heights. Our obsession with “who got to the top first” may have begun in 1786, the year Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard climbed Mont Blanc and inaugurated an era in which Romantic notions of the sublime spurred climbers’ aspirations. In the following decades, climbing lost its revolutionary cachet as it became associated instead with bourgeois outdoor leisure. Still, the mythic stories of mountaineers, threaded through with themes of imperialism, masculinity, and ascendant Western science and culture, seized the imagination of artists and historians well into the twentieth century, providing grist for stage shows, poetry, films, and landscape paintings. Today, we live on the threshold of a hot planet, where melting glaciers and rising sea levels create ambivalence about the conquest of nature. Long after Hillary and Tenzing’s ascent of Everest, though, the image of modern man supreme on the mountaintop retains its currency. Peter Hansen’s exploration of these persistent images indicates how difficult it is to imagine our relationship with nature in terms other than domination.
Author: Peter H. Hansen Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674074556 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 382
Book Description
The history of mountaineering has long served as a metaphor for civilization triumphant. Once upon a time, the Alps were an inaccessible habitat of specters and dragons, until heroic men—pioneers of enlightenment—scaled their summits, classified their strata and flora, and banished the phantoms forever. A fascinating interdisciplinary study of the first ascents of the major Alpine peaks and Mount Everest, The Summits of Modern Man surveys the far-ranging significance of our encounters with the world’s most alluring and forbidding heights. Our obsession with “who got to the top first” may have begun in 1786, the year Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard climbed Mont Blanc and inaugurated an era in which Romantic notions of the sublime spurred climbers’ aspirations. In the following decades, climbing lost its revolutionary cachet as it became associated instead with bourgeois outdoor leisure. Still, the mythic stories of mountaineers, threaded through with themes of imperialism, masculinity, and ascendant Western science and culture, seized the imagination of artists and historians well into the twentieth century, providing grist for stage shows, poetry, films, and landscape paintings. Today, we live on the threshold of a hot planet, where melting glaciers and rising sea levels create ambivalence about the conquest of nature. Long after Hillary and Tenzing’s ascent of Everest, though, the image of modern man supreme on the mountaintop retains its currency. Peter Hansen’s exploration of these persistent images indicates how difficult it is to imagine our relationship with nature in terms other than domination.
Author: Alan McNee Publisher: Victorian Secrets ISBN: 1906469679 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 410
Book Description
Albert Smith is one of the most famous Victorians of whom you've probably never heard. During his lifetime, he was a household name, thrilling audiences with his Ascent of Mont Blanc show at London's Egyptian Hall. An inveterate showman, Smith was also a doctor, journalist, raconteur, novelist, travel writer, and playwright. His many talents were outstripped only by his boundless self-belief and huge personality. Even Queen Victoria described him in her journal as "inimitable", an epithet Smith's contemporary Charles Dickens liked to reserve for himself. Although Smith died aged only 43, he managed to pack much incident into his short life. He was robbed by highwaymen in Italy, narrowly escaped death in a hot air ballooning accident, and dodged arrest in Paris during the June Days Uprising of 1848. He also got caught up in the row over Dickens's affair with Ellen Ternan. While his bumptiousness made Smith a divisive figure, many saw in him the Victorian ideal of the self-made man: energetic, imaginative, and ready to seize any new opportunity. As Alan McNee explains in this lively biography, it was his intrepid ascent of Mont Blanc in 1851 that propelled Smith to stardom. His subsequent show inspired 'Mont Blanc mania', encouraging participation in mountaineering as a popular pursuit. The Cockney Who Sold the Alps is a story of ambition, spectacle, and the fleeting nature of celebrity.
Author: Edward Whymper (Alpiniste) Publisher: ISBN: 9780900523670 Category : Matterhorn (Switzerland and Italy) Languages : en Pages : 156
Book Description
These pictures, mostly not seen for 100 years and never been published as a set before, give us a unique glimpse of the mountain world at the end of the 19th century.
Author: Alan Kane Publisher: Rocky Mountain Books Ltd ISBN: 189752272X Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 340
Book Description
With 15,000 copies of previous editions sold, this bestselling guide brings together 150 of Alan Kane’s favourite scrambles, starting in Waterton National Park and working up through the Crowsnest area and Kananaskis Country into the contiguous national parks of Banff, Kootenay, Yoho and Jasper. Each peak can be climbed in one day from a road or backcountry lodge. All scrambles in the book are carefully graded and range from easy walk-ups for experienced hikers who want a little more challenge to more difficult, hands-on scrambles for more daring climbers. Each mountain is well illustrated with route photos and often a photo of the crux.
Author: Peter H. Hansen
Author: Peter H. Hansen
Author: Alan McNee
Author: Edward Whymper (Alpiniste)
Author: Huw Lewis-Jones
Author: Edward Whymper
Author: Maggs Bros
Author: Jennifer Tucker
Author: 
Author: Alan Kane
Author: Maggs Bros