If you are looking for a book that goes into endless and nonsensical detail of the war, then this is for you. If you want coherent details of climbing a mountain, look else where. Stupid book. I was flipping through entire chapters at a time. Worthless!!

Don't waste your time reading this stupidly bloated and pointless book. What sort of moron would endlessly go on about particulars of British trench warfare ad nauseum interspersed with details re Mallory's homosexual habits to no point while avoiding any meaningful insight about Everest dragging the reader through endless crap while he hopes for anything which relates to mountain climbing. I assume the author is an endlessly priggish and anal Brit who can't help himself but even so he's lucky that Mallory's descendants haven't strangled him for dragging their brave and heroic ancestor through such a flatulent and inappropriate pseudo literary mistreatment.

Couldn't put the book down. Weaves the important events of the era like WWI into the story brilliantly. What those climbers went through was hard to imagine. Strongly recommended.