Everest: Legendary Victors and Vanquished, by Peter Sherwood

Peter Sherwood puts together a small volume on a big mountain in Everest: Legendary Victors and Vanquished. He writes about the history of climbing Mount Everest, focusing on three important seasons: 1924, 1953, and 1996. Though the book is tiny (smaller dimensions than a trade paperback, and 100 pages long), it is chock-full of color photographs, both historical and modern, that accompany Sherwood's prose. He writes about the expeditions intelligently, though not in detail, doing a good job not to focus on heroes or oversimplify. The photographs are a good set, beautifully printed (Thank you, Sherwood for using so many of Noel's hand-colored slides for 1924!), that add quite a bit of color to the limited text. A great book for a gentle introduction to the phenomenon of Everest!