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Book Review of Into Thin Air : A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster

Into Thin Air : A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
Foucault avatar reviewed on + 27 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 11


What an amazing book! It should be mentioned that there are other perspectives to this disaster (some which can be read in this Salon.com series of articles), and other books have been written about it, but this does not affect the fact that this is an incredibly well-written book. It reads like a suspense novel. It's just so tragic that you have to keep reminding yourself that these people were real. Real lives were lost.

In 1996, when this book is set, I was living in my home country of England, and I don't remember the story at all, so unlike some who read this book, I never saw the news stories flying about at the time. I would not normally read a book about mountaineering, but this is a book about the people involved and the narrative reads so well, that even those without any interest in the subject should find it gripping.