The Boys of Everest: Chris Bonington and the Tragedy of Climbing's Greatest Generation » (Unabridged)

Clint Willis has published more than forty books, including anthologies on topics such as adventure, politics, relgion, and war. His work has appeared in hundreds of publications, including Men's Journal, Outside, and the New York Times. His work has also been nominated for the American Society of Magazine Editors' National Magazine Award.

This book tells the story of a band of climbers who reinvented mountaineering during the three decades after Everest’s first ascent. It is a story of tremendous courage, astonishing achievement and heart-breaking loss. Their leader was the boyish, fanatically driven Chris Bonington. His inner circle — which came to be know as Bonington’s Boys — included a dozen who became climbing’s greatest generation. Bonington’s Boys gave birth to a new brand of climbing. They took increasingly terrible risks on now-legendary expeditions to the world’s most fearsome peaks. And they paid an enormous price for their achievements. Most of Bonington’s Boys died in the mountains, leaving behind the hardest question of all: Was it worth it?

The Boys of Everest, based on interviews with surviving climbers and other individuals, as well as five decades of journals, expedition accounts, and letters, provides the closest thing to an answer that we’ll ever have. It offers riveting descriptions of what Bonington's Boys found in the mountains, as well as an understanding of what they lost there.