Download or read book The Summits of Modern Man written by Peter H. Hansen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of mountaineering has long served as a metaphor for civilization triumphant. Once upon a time, the Alps were an inaccessible habitat of specters and dragons, until heroic men—pioneers of enlightenment—scaled their summits, classified their strata and flora, and banished the phantoms forever. A fascinating interdisciplinary study of the first ascents of the major Alpine peaks and Mount Everest, The Summits of Modern Man surveys the far-ranging significance of our encounters with the world’s most alluring and forbidding heights. Our obsession with “who got to the top first” may have begun in 1786, the year Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard climbed Mont Blanc and inaugurated an era in which Romantic notions of the sublime spurred climbers’ aspirations. In the following decades, climbing lost its revolutionary cachet as it became associated instead with bourgeois outdoor leisure. Still, the mythic stories of mountaineers, threaded through with themes of imperialism, masculinity, and ascendant Western science and culture, seized the imagination of artists and historians well into the twentieth century, providing grist for stage shows, poetry, films, and landscape paintings. Today, we live on the threshold of a hot planet, where melting glaciers and rising sea levels create ambivalence about the conquest of nature. Long after Hillary and Tenzing’s ascent of Everest, though, the image of modern man supreme on the mountaintop retains its currency. Peter Hansen’s exploration of these persistent images indicates how difficult it is to imagine our relationship with nature in terms other than domination.

Download or read book Jacques Balmat written by T. Louis Oxley and published by . This book was released on 1881 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Because It s There written by Alan Weber and published by Taylor Trade Publications. This book was released on 2003-04-09 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mountains have long inspired the wit and daring of the world's most fascinating explorers. In this definitive collection of mountain lore, Alan Weber exhibits forty-three essays by artists and adventurers to whom climbing was more a mission than a sport. Beginning with the fabled tale of Hannibal's Roman invasion-men, horses, and elephants in tow-through the hitherto impassable Alps, the accounts progress to recent descriptions of high-peaks mountain climbing in Mount Everest and the formidable K-2. Included among the earlier pieces are Petrarcha's introspective journey to the Windy Mount; William Windham's exploration of Montenvers and the "Sea of Ice" in 1741; and English artist-critic John Ruskin's essay on mountain climate and culture. Literary masters portray the idyllic and imperfect aspects of mountain life: the restoration poet Andrew Marvell offers a hymn to the Barrow hills, while poems from Shelley, Lord Byron, and Matthew Arnold praise the natural beauty and fresh air of the mountain crags. Because It's There pays homage to the spiritual introspection and respect for nature engendered by the looming mountain ranges that have demarcated territories, protecting villages and cities from invasion. The explorations these mountains have inspired have tested human endurance and mental strength. Alan Weber is a research fellow of the Institute for European Studies at Cornell University and a CEMERS Associate Fellow at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is the editor and author of Nineteenth Century Science: A Selection of Original Texts, and Women Almanac Writers (Forthcoming). A long-time member of the Penn State Outing and Cornell Outing Clubs, he has rock and ice-climbed in the Adirondacks, Green and Shawangunk Mountains, and Mount Rainier.

Download or read book The Early Mountaineers written by Francis Henry Gribble and published by . This book was released on 1899 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Pictorial Sport and Adventure written by and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Killing Dragons written by Fergus Fleming and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2002-02-04 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a riveting narrative of daredevils and eccentrics, Fergus Fleming gives us the breathtaking story of some of history's greatest explorers as they conquer the soaring peaks of the Alps. Fleming recounts the incredible exploits of the men whose centuries-old fear of the mountain range turned quickly to curiosity, then to obsession, as they explored Europe's frozen wilderness. In the late eighteenth century French and Swiss scientists became interested in the Alps as a research destination, but in the 1850s the focus changed: the icy mountains now offered an all-out competition for British climbers who wanted to conquer ever higher and more impossible heights, and explorers fought each other on the peaks and in the press, entertaining a vast public smitten with their bravery, delighted by their personal animosities, and horrified by the disasters that befell them. "...excellent popular history, with its proper share of mad dogs and Englishmen....Fleming's rendition is dramatic and masterful." -- Anthony Brandt, National Geographic Adventure

Download or read book The Annals of Mont Blanc written by Charles Edward Mathews and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Biographical Dictionary of Explorers written by Alan Wexler and published by Infobase Holdings, Inc. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 910 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An informative, fascinating resource suitable for students, researchers, and general readers, this biographical dictionary is a "who was who" of world and space explorers, giving readers a sense of the human drama—the achievements and the challenges—that those who go where few or none have gone before must face. The explorers covered include Jacques Cousteau, Sir Vivian Fuchs, John Glenn Jr., Aleksei Leonov, Annie Peck, Valentina Tereshkova, and many more.

Download or read book The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature Science and Art written by and published by . This book was released on 1892 with total page 952 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Athenaeum and Literary Chronicle written by James Silk Buckingham and published by . This book was released on 1860 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Athenaeum written by and published by . This book was released on 1860 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Complete Mountaineer written by George Dixon Abraham and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book the complete mountaineer written by george d. abraham and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 810 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Trekking and Climbing in the Western Alps written by Hilary Sharp and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Detailing 22 treks in France, Switzerland, and Italy, this informative guide has detailed maps in full color and provides descriptions of treks in the Southern Alps, the Western Outliers, the Mont Blanc Range, the Pennine Alps, and Western Oberland. A Trek Essentials box in each chapter summarizes the number of days required, how to access each trek, and the highest elevations.

Download or read book Chamonix and the Range of Mont Blanc written by Edward Whymper and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Alpine Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The European Journals of William Maclure written by William Maclure and published by American Philosophical Society. This book was released on 1988 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Maclure (1763-1840) was an Amer. geologist & philanthropist who traveled extensively in Europe during the early years of the 19th century, conducting geological surveys & collecting rock & mineral specimens for schools & scientific institutions in the U.S. He has been called "the Father of Modern Geology" for the extraordinary feat of having made a one-man geological survey of the eastern U.S. from Maine to Georgia, & from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. Maclure used his wealth to support such institutions as the Acad. of Natural Sciences of Phila. & to subsidize the work of a number of scientists & teachers. He was also concerned with the reform of education & set up libraries & schools for children of the lower classes. Scholars have questioned why Maclure retired early to devote the rest of his life to science & reform. Some answers may be found in this vol., which includes transcriptions from microfilm of some 20 journals which Maclure kept during his travels & research in Europe; they span the years 1805-15 & 1820-25. Illus.