Life and Death on Mt. Everest

Winner of the J.I. Staley Prize "[Ortner's book] written so clearly and with such evident fascination with the subject that it's more than just accessible to lay readers: it's captivating. I've had anthropology texts put me to sleep right after morning coffee, but this one kept me awake at night."--Michael Parfit, New York Times Book Review "Having lived and worked with the Sherpas for more than thirty years as a serious anthropologist, Ortner is in an ideal position to introduce the other, unknown culture involved with Himalayan climbing... Fascinating."--Pico Iyer, New York Review of Books "The book brings us a much richer understanding of the cultural partnership underpinning Himalayan mountaineering... Life and Death on Mt. Everest is a swift and canny guide to this uncharted territory."--Alison Demos, Lingua Franca "Sherry Ortner reveals the details of Sherpa life on and off the mountain and sweeps away a century of misguided characterizations... [This] book is one of those rare crossover works, a scholarly exploration of Sherpa culture that the lay reader (climber or not) will find utterly fascinating."--Newsday "[A] first-rate study... [Ortner] is an intelligent and fair-minded scholar who has combed the mountain literature and fused it with what she observed in the field."--David Craig, Los Angeles Times "A remarkable display of agile fieldwork, sensitive to all the distinctive shadings that compose [the] subject... Ortner arrives at a complex but cohesive portrait of the century-long Sherpa association with the mountaineers..."--Kirkus Reviews "This is not another nail-biting saga of alpine disaster, but rather--finally--an authoritative study of the group that has made summiting 8,000-meter Himalayan peaks possible for Westerners... Ortner retells the Everest story from the Sherpa point of view..."--Outside "A fascinating examination of the world of the Sherpas... [Ortner's] book is an eye-opening, behind-the-scenes look at mountaineering."--Library Journal "A well-written and thorough account...and the only book on this topic."--Choice "A fascinating new study of the interaction between Western climbers and Sherpas..."--Susan Spano, Los Angeles Times