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Geoff Nicholson has been walking his whole life. Wherever he is and wherever he goes in the world, he walks and writes about what he sees and feels. Here he reflects on the nature of walking, why we do it, how it benefits us and, in some cases, how it can damage and even destroy us. Geoff's recent diagnosis with a rare, incurable form of cancer has made him all too aware of his own mortality. Sooner or later there will be a last step, a last excursion, a final drift, for him just as there will be for all of us. Geoff vows to continue to walk for as long as he can. This moving, vital book describes his own walks and relates them to the walks of street photographers, artists and writers, such as Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, Sophie Calle, Jorge Luis Borges and Virginia Woolf, among many others. Walking on Thin Air is a book about mortality and, above all, a celebration of being alive.
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The epic account of the storm on the summit of Mt. Everest that claimed five lives and left countless more—including Krakauer's—in guilt-ridden disarray. "A harrowing tale of the perils of high-altitude climbing, a story of bad luck and worse judgment and of heartbreaking heroism." —PEOPLE A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong. By writing Into Thin Air, Krakauer may have hoped to exorcise some of his own demons and lay to rest some of the painful questions that still surround the event. He takes great pains to provide a balanced picture of the people and events he witnessed and gives due credit to the tireless and dedicated Sherpas. He also avoids blasting easy targets such as Sandy Pittman, the wealthy socialite who brought an espresso maker along on the expedition. Krakauer's highly personal inquiry into the catastrophe provides a great deal of insight into what went wrong. But for Krakauer himself, further interviews and investigations only lead him to the conclusion that his perceived failures were directly responsible for a fellow climber's death. Clearly, Krakauer remains haunted by the disaster, and although he relates a number of incidents in which he acted selflessly and even heroically, he seems unable to view those instances objectively. In the end, despite his evenhanded and even generous assessment of others' actions, he reserves a full measure of vitriol for himself. This updated trade paperback edition of Into Thin Air includes an extensive new postscript that sheds fascinating light on the acrimonious debate that flared between Krakauer and Everest guide Anatoli Boukreev in the wake of the tragedy. "I have no doubt that Boukreev's intentions were good on summit day," writes Krakauer in the postscript, dated August 1999. "What disturbs me, though, was Boukreev's refusal to acknowledge the possibility that he made even a single poor decision. Never did he indicate that perhaps it wasn't the best choice to climb without gas or go down ahead of his clients." As usual, Krakauer supports his points with dogged research and a good dose of humility. But rather than continue the heated discourse that has raged since Into Thin Air's denouncement of guide Boukreev, Krakauer's tone is conciliatory; he points most of his criticism at G. Weston De Walt, who coauthored The Climb, Boukreev's version of events. And in a touching conclusion, Krakauer recounts his last conversation with the late Boukreev, in which the two weathered climbers agreed to disagree about certain points. Krakauer had great hopes to patch things up with Boukreev, but the Russian later died in an avalanche on another Himalayan peak, Annapurna I. In 1999, Krakauer received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters--a prestigious prize intended "to honor writers of exceptional accomplishment." According to the Academy's citation, "Krakauer combines the tenacity and courage of the finest tradition of investigative journalism with the stylish subtlety and profound insight of the born writer. His account of an ascent of Mount Everest has led to a general reevaluation of climbing and of the commercialization of what was once a romantic, solitary sport; while his account of the life and death of Christopher McCandless, who died of starvation after challenging the Alaskan wilderness, delves even more deeply and disturbingly into the fascination of nature and the devastating effects of its lure on a young and curious mind."
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A "gripping book about this extraordinary man who lived passionately and died unnecessarily" (USA Today) in post-9/11 Afghanistan, from the bestselling author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air. In 2002, Pat Tillman walked away from a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to join the Army and became an icon of American patriotism. When he was killed in Afghanistan two years later, a legend was born. But the real Pat Tillman was much more remarkable, and considerably more complicated than the public knew. Sent first to Iraq—a war he would openly declare was “illegal as hell” —and eventually to Afghanistan, Tillman was driven by emotionally charged, sometimes contradictory notions of duty, honor, justice, and masculine pride, and he was determined to serve his entire three-year commitment. But on April 22, 2004, his life would end in a barrage of bullets fired by his fellow soldiers. Though obvious to most of the two dozen soldiers on the scene that a ranger in Tillman’s own platoon had fired the fatal shots, the Army aggressively maneuvered to keep this information from Tillman’s family and the American public for five weeks following his death. During this time, President Bush used Tillman’s name to promote his administration’ s foreign policy. Long after Tillman’s nationally televised memorial service, the Army grudgingly notified his closest relatives that he had “probably” been killed by friendly fire while it continued to dissemble about the details of his death and who was responsible. Drawing on Tillman’s journals and letters and countless interviews with those who knew him and extensive research in Afghanistan, Jon Krakauer chronicles Tillman’s riveting, tragic odyssey in engrossing detail highlighting his remarkable character and personality while closely examining the murky, heartbreaking circumstances of his death. Infused with the power and authenticity readers have come to expect from Krakauer’s storytelling, Where Men Win Glory exposes shattering truths about men and war. This edition has been updated to reflect new developments and includes new material obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Ann Cleeves is back with Thin Air, the sixth book in her beloved Shetland series, which is now a hit television show starring Douglas Henshall. A group of old university friends leave the bright lights of London and travel to Shetland to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends. But, one of them, Eleanor, disappears—apparently into thin air. It's mid-summer, a time of light nights and unexpected mists. And then Eleanor's body is discovered lying in a small loch close to the cliff edge. Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are dispatched to investigate. Before she went missing, Eleanor claimed to have seen the ghost of a local child who drowned in the 1920s. Her interest in the ghost had seemed unhealthy—obsessive, even—to her friends: an indication of a troubled mind. But Jimmy and Willow are convinced that there is more to Eleanor's death than they first thought. Is there a secret that lies behind the myth? One so shocking that someone would kill—many years later—to protect? Ann Cleeves' striking new novel is a quintessential whodunit with surprises at every turn.
When Walker first steps onto the road, he has no thoughts, no history, no memories, and no clothes. As he travels and meets people and learns from them, he comes to know more about life, living, and becoming the person he's meant to be. Walker is a parable for all of us who wonder what might be the purpose of life, why bad things happen with almost as much regularity as good things, and how we can learn from the bad examples and experiences in our lives as much as we can learn from the good things. Tom Walsh's parable is a story of the ages, a timeless exploration of ideas and thoughts that all of us wonder about, a sincere and heartfelt portrait of a man who has no past and no future, but who learns to make the most of each precious present moment as it comes.
This book is a critical interdisciplinary approach to the study of contemporary visual culture and image studies, exploring ideas about space and place and ultimately contributing to the debates about being human in the digital age. The upward and downward pull seem in a constant contest for humanity’s attention. Both forces are powerful in the effects and affects they invoke. When tracing this iconological history, Amanda du Preez starts in the early nineteenth century, moving into the twentieth century and then spanning the whole century up to contemporary twenty-first century screen culture and space travels. Du Preez parses the intersecting pathways between Heaven and Earth, up and down, flying and falling through the concept of being “spaced out”. The idea of being “spaced out” is applied as a metaphor to trace the visual history of sublime encounters that displace Earth, gravity, locality, belonging, home, real life, and embodiment. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, media and cultural studies, phenomenology, digital culture, mobility studies, and urban studies.
Catherine has always hoped to see a farrier cat, but she's never come across anything about the legend in the books and scrolls her tutors have had her read. She finally gets her wish, but it couldn't come at a worse time, and the cat is about to kill her.
At a time when Islam is the focus of attention, vilified by some and a source of inspiration for others, Arkoun's is one of few voices that seek to go against the stream. His radical review of mainstream historiography of Islam draws on interdisciplinary analysis - historical, social, psychological and anthropological. As one of the foremost thinkers of the Muslim world, Arkoun is in a position to question dogmatic constructs from within, with respect and critical acumen. An understanding of this approach will lead to an emancipatory turn in the intellectual and political spheres of Muslim societies. 'Mohammed Arkoun is an independent philosopher who has rendered outstanding services to societies in the Arab world by seeking a genuinely Arab approach to reason and enlightenment.' -- Ibn Rushd, Fund for Freedom of Thought 'No ordinary review could do justice to this extraordinary book.' -- Mahmoud Ibrahim, California State Polytechnic University
Perceforest is one of the largest and certainly the most extraordinary of the late Arthurian romances, and is almost completely unknown except to a handful of scholars. But it is a work of exceptional richness and importance, and has been justly described as "an encyclopaedia of 14th-century chivalry" and "a mine of folkloric motifs". Its contents are drawn not only from earlier Arthurian material, but also from romances about Alexander the Great, from Roman histories and from medieval travel writing - not to mention oral tradition, including as it does the first and unexpurgated version of the story of the Sleeping Beauty. Out of this, the author creates a remarkable prehistory of King Arthur's Britain, describing how Alexander the Great gives the island to Perceforest, who has to purge the island of magic-wielding knights descended from Darnant the Enchanter, despite their supernatural powers. Perceforest then founds the knightly order of the "Franc Palais", an ideal of chivalric civilisation which prefigures the Round Table of Arthur and indeed that of Edward III; but that civilisation is, as the author shows, all too fragile. The action all takes place in a pagan world of many gods, but the temple of the Sovereign God, discovered by Perceforest, prefigures the Christian world and the coming of the Grail and Arthur. Nigel Bryant has recently adapted this immense romance into English; even in his version, which gives a complete account of the whole work but links extensive sections of full translation with compressed accounts of other passages, it runs to nearly half amillion words. A Perceforest Reader is an ideal introduction to the remarkable world portrayed in this late flowering of the Arthurian imagination.
The Problem with Grace develops a post-secular, post-sectarian political theology and shows how a series of religious concepts (such as love, faith, liturgy, and revelation) can be constructively used today in both political theory and political practice.