Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering
Maurice Isserman
This book is available for download with iBooks on your Mac or iOS device, and with iTunes on your computer. Books can be read with iBooks on your Mac or iOS device.
Description
This magesterial and thrilling history argues that the story of American mountaineering is the story of America itself.
Mountains have had an outsized impact on American identity: the Rockies and Tetons pulled us westward toward Manifest Destiny; the Catskills and Appalachians stirred the transcendentalists; and Yosemite inspired the early environmental conservationists. Continental Divide tells this gripping history through four centuries of landmark climbs and thrilling first ascents.
With an incredible cast—including Lewis and Clark, Thoreau and Emerson, John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt, Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder, Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld—Continental Divide explores the rivalries that developed between daring, upstart climbers from the West, especially the Sierra Club, and their more traditional, upper-class eastern counterparts. Describing epic campaigns from Mt. Washington to Denali, Maurice Isserman traces the evolving social, cultural, and political roles mountains played in shaping the country, and he describes how American mountaineers forged a “brotherhood of the rope,” modeled on America’s unique democratic self-image.

- Category: Mountaineering
- Expected Release: Apr 21, 2016
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
- Seller: W. W. Norton
- Print Length: 416 Pages
- Language: English
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