**The definitive story of the British adventurers who survived the
trenches of World War I and went on to risk their lives climbing Mount
Everest.
**
On June 6, 1924, two men set out from a camp perched at 23,000 feet on
an ice ledge just below the lip of Everest's North Col. George Mallory,
thirty-seven, was Britain's finest climber. Sandy Irvine was a
twenty-two-year-old Oxford scholar with little previous mountaineering
experience. Neither of them returned.
Drawing on more than a decade of prodigious research, bestselling author
and explorer Wade Davis vividly re-creates the heroic efforts of Mallory
and his fellow climbers, setting their significant achievements in
sweeping historical context: from Britain's nineteen-century imperial
ambitions to the war that shaped Mallory's generation. Theirs was a
country broken, and the Everest expeditions emerged as a powerful symbol
of national redemption and hope. In Davis's rich exploration, he creates
a timeless portrait of these remarkable men and their extraordinary
times.