The Wildest Dream: The Biography of George Mallory
In 1924, a 37-year-old English schoolmaster and war veteran  named George Mallory bid farewell to his beloved wife and children and  went off to Tibet, where he intended to climb the north face of Mount  Everest, a feat that had never been achieved. He was warned that the  approach might not be attainable--and that, in any event, humans might  not be able to survive at such altitudes without oxygen. But in that  fine British spirit of dauntlessness, Mallory pressed on all the same,  and he and his novice companion Andrew Irvine did not survive.When  Mallory's frozen body was found on the high slopes of Everest in 1999,  it touched off a wave of interest in the question of whether he had  reached the top before falling to his death--which, if so, would  unseatEdmund  Hillary's 1953 expedition as the first to summit. Peter and Leni  Gillman, themselves mountaineers, hint that he did, drawing on  evidence that is at best circumstantial but compelling all the  same. Their interest in this biography, however, is to provide a more  complete picture of Mallory as a man of his time, who was a familiar  among the Bloomsbury set of writers, a loving husband and father, an  accomplished scholar and teacher, and a modest hero who, though not  technically the best climber of his time, never refused a  challenge. The Gillmans acquit themselves in this task very well, and  they offer a fascinating reconstruction of what they imagine to be  Mallory's last moments on earth. Their book makes a fine companion to  Conrad Anker and David Roberts'sThe Lost Explorerand  David Breashears and Audrey Salkeld'sLast  Climb.--Gregory McNamee--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.