For eighteen years Ed Viesturs pursued climbing's holy grail: to stand atop the world's fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, without the aid of bottled oxygen. But No Shortcuts to the Top is as much about the man who would become the first American to achieve that goal as it is about his stunning quest. As Viesturs recounts the stories of his most harrowing climbs, he reveals a man torn...

The bestselling author of The Mountain and No Shortcuts to the Top chronicles his three attempts to climb the world's tenth-highest and statistically deadliest peak while exploring the dramatic and tragic history of others who have made--or attempted--the ascent

As a high school student, Ed Viesturs read and was captivated by the French climber Maurice Herzog's famous and grisly account of the first ascent of Annapurna in 1950. When he began his own campaign to climb the world's 14 highest peaks in the late 1980s, Viesturs looked forward with...

In The Mountain, veteran world-class climber and bestselling author Ed Viesturs--the only American to have climbed all fourteen of the world's 8,000-meter peaks--trains his sights on Mount Everest in richly detailed accounts of expeditions that are by turns personal, harrowing, deadly, and inspiring.

The highest mountain on earth,...