Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit by Robert Macfarlane

By Robert Macfarlane

Publish 12 months note: First released in 2003
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Combining money owed of mythical mountain ascents with bright descriptions of his personal forays into wild, excessive landscapes, Robert McFarlane unearths how the secret of the world’s maximum locations has got here to grip the Western imagination—and perennially attracts legions of adventurers up the main perilous slopes.

His tale starts 3 centuries in the past, while mountains have been feared because the forbidding abodes of dragons and different mysterious beasts. within the mid-1700s the attentions of either technological know-how and poetry sparked a fondness for mountains; Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Lord Byron extolled the chic stories available on excessive; and by means of 1924 the demise on Mt Everest of an Englishman named George Mallory got here to represent the heroic beliefs of his day. Macfarlane additionally displays on worry, chance, and the shattering great thing about ice and snow, the contest and contemplation of the climb, and the unusual trade truth of excessive altitude, magically enveloping us within the attract of mountains at each level.

Literary Awards
Guardian First publication Award (2003)
Somerset Maugham Award (2004)
Boardman Tasker Prize Nominee for Mountain Literature (2003)
Sunday instances younger author of the yr Award (2004)

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Extra resources for Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit

Sample text

But for the third degree, which is Simulation and false profession; that I hold more culpable, and lesse politicke; except it be in great and rare matters. And therefore a generall custome of Simulation (which is this last degree) is a vice, rising either of a naturall falsenesse or fearefulnesse, or of a minde that hath some maine faults; which because a man must needs disguise, it maketh him practise Simulation in other things lest his hand should be out of use. The great advantages of Simulation and Dissimulation are three.

In Operation BREST, it portrayed an armor attack build-up, which was apparently believed by the Germans, because—due to lack of coordination—an actual armored unit tried to attack in that area. In another similar operation, the weakened German division opposite the phony armor build-up believed the story. S. armor, launched a spoiling attack—definitely not what the American commander had wanted him to do. ” You can’t baldly “announce” what you’re doing, or he’ll be suspicious. The Art and Science of Military Deception CHAPTER 8 The Principle of Naturalness Barton Whaley I think anything out of the ordinary routine of life well worth reporting.

You can’t baldly “announce” what you’re doing, or he’ll be suspicious. The Art and Science of Military Deception CHAPTER 8 The Principle of Naturalness Barton Whaley I think anything out of the ordinary routine of life well worth reporting. —Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901) Each time an animal shifts from its natural rhythm, there is a reason, and thus an opportunity for us to ask why. —Mark Elbroch, Mammal Tracks and Sign (2003) To protect against the nemesis of inconsistency the magician deploys a cloak of naturalness.

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