Richard Sale – författare

A century ago the summits of the world's highest peaks, Everest included, were beyond reach. Pioneering attempts to overcome the dangers of climbing at extremely high altitudes ended in failure, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Yet today high-altitude ascents are frequent, almost commonplace. Everest can be conquered by relatively inexperienced mountaineers, and their exploits barely merit media attention - unless they go fatally wrong. In this fascinating study of the dramatic history of Everest climbs, Richard Sale and George Rodway describe in vivid detail the struggle to conquer the mountain and the advances in scientific knowledge that made the conquest possible. Their account gives a compelling insight into the science of mountaineering as well as the physical and psychological challenges faced by individuals who choose to test themselves in some of the harshest conditions on earth. Dr George Rodway, an assistant professor at the University of Utah, is a physiologist, mountaineer and an expert on mountain medicine and the science of high-altitude climbs.As well as publishing many papers and articles on these subjects, he is the editor of George Ingle Finch's The Struggle for Everest. He has also written extensively on the history of high-altitude physiology for journals such as High Altitude Medicine and Biology.

K2 is one of the most demanding mountaineering challenges in the world and one of the most treacherous - K2 is a legend. Extreme, unpredictable weather and the acutely difficult climbing conditions test the technique, endurance and psychological strength of the most experienced mountaineers to the limit - and often beyond. Many of the men and women who have sought to reach the summit have failed, often with tragic consequences - over 70 of them have died or disappeared. Yet this, the second highest mountain on Earth, continues to exercise for the world's top mountaineers a special - all too often lethal - attraction, and this is the subject of Richard Sale's fascinating new book. As he traces the climbing history of K2 over the last 150 years, he shows in graphic detail how it acquired this awesome reputation: it was during the first serious attempts on the summit in the 1930s and 1950s that K2 became known as the Savage Mountain.

This stunningly beautiful and informative book celebrates the Arctic, one of the last great wildernesses on the planet; a place where animals have survived for thousands of years protected only by fur and feathers. Humans also survive in the Arctic, but only those who have adjusted to the climate over millennia and who clad themselves in the skins of the animals they hunt. The Arctic can be harsh, but it is also stunningly beautiful – days during which the sun glints on ice, nights illuminated by the ethereal dancing light of the aurora and with a glimpse of some of the most remarkable animals on the planet.Many travel to the Arctic to see the animals, the land mammals, the whales and seals, and the birds. However, the Arctic also has an absorbing human history. The origins of the Inuit in North America, and the array of Eurasian northern peoples, from the Sami of Scandinavia to the Yuppik hunters from Asia’s Bering Sea coast, are still debated, while the discovery, just a year or so ago, of the second ship of Franklin’s doomed expedition to find the North-West Passage has reopened the arguments over exactly what did happen to more than 100 Royal Navy seamen.This fascinating, magnificent area is now under severe threat. Global warming is causing the sea ice to shrink, in both area and volume. This allows easier access to its probable resources and, ironically, this access merely adds to the threats to the area and its wildlife. Due to feedback mechanisms, the Arctic warms about twice as fast as the Earth. The area therefore acts in the way that canaries once acted in coal mines, giving an early warning of danger: melting sea ice not only threatens the local wildlife but indicates the threat to the Earth as a whole.This is a truly remarkable book encompassing the diverse facets of this magnificent area and its vital importance as an indicator of the planet’s health.