A beautifully written and sure-footed history of mountaineering ‘before Everest’, full of wonderful stories and spanning continents and centuries. A splendid debut.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes, author of Shackleton
Hugely entertaining… Light is above all a storyteller. Anyone who loves mountains will enjoy this book.
Sara Wheeler ― The Spectator
Wonderful… a massive story with an enormous cast of characters, among them some of the most compelling figures of mountaineering history.
Wade Davis, author of Into the Silence
The true story of the thrill-seekers, map-makers, soldiers, occultists, artists and porters who paved the way for modern mountaineering.
Beautiful… remote… dangerous – for generations we have looked to the mountains in awe. Incan priests scaled the slopes of the Andes to pay tribute to the ‘Great Lord’ of each mountain, travelling higher than any European would for centuries. Gurkha riflemen canvassed the Karakoram, admiring the distant summits of Masherbrum and K2 with fear and exhilaration. Tweed-clad Victorians made the first serious assaults on the highest peaks of the Himalaya, as they ventured into the icebound unknown.
Tracing the rise of mountaineering’s world altitude record from the slopes of the sacred volcano Llullaillaco to the glacial crags and crevasses of High Asia, The White Ladder takes a panoramic journey through the storied history of mountaineering before Everest. Joining a range of colourful characters, from American geographer and suffragette Fanny Bullock Workman to the English occultist Aleister Crowley, it makes a searching examination of the fundamental human drive to climb higher and higher.
Returns readers to an era when alpine progress was measured in steps closer to the sun rather than seconds on the stopwatch or likes on social media… a thoughtful, nuanced, engaging history.
Michael O’Donnell ― Wall Street Journal
An engaging and agreeably ornate history of earlier mountaineering… paints a vivid picture of this seemingly innate need and those who first heeded its call.
Charles Culkin ― New York Times
Thrilling… Daniel Light delivers stories that are poetic, spiritual and astonishing in their courage and drive.
Sonia Purnell, author of A Woman of No Importance
Vivid, nicely paced and beautifully written… The White Ladder neatly bridges a lacuna in the history of mountaineering.
John Keay, author of Himalaya
Superb… highly readable, informative and beautifully researched with a lightness of touch entirely in keeping with its subject matter.
Julie Summers, author of Fearless on Everest
Daniel Light guides the reader through a mountain-scape that stretches from the Alps to the Himalaya… with the sure footing of a serious student of climbing history, and the élan of a skilled storyteller. This is a book to curl up with on a cold dark night in a comfortable armchair before a bright fire.
Maurice Isserman, co-author of Fallen Giants
A high-octane history of mountaineering … a spirited, adventuresome chronicle.
Publishers Weekly
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