Sports & Adventure Biography, Teens - Biography, Film Biographies & Interviews, Outdoor & Adventure Sports, Teens - Sports, Sports & Adventure Biography, Filmmaking
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Overview
For generations of resolute adventurers, from George Mallory to Sir Edmund Hillary to Jon Krakauer, Mount Everest and the world's other greatest peaks have provided the ultimate testing ground. But the question remains: Why climb? In High Exposure, elite mountaineer and acclaimed Everest filmmaker David Breashears answers with an intimate and captivating look at his life.For Breashears, climbing has never been a question of risk taking: Rather, it is the pursuit of excellence and a quest for self-knowledge. Danger comes, he argues, when ambition blinds reason. The stories this world-class climber and great adventurer tells will surprise you -- from discussions of competitiveness on the heights to a frank description of the 1996 Everest tragedy.
Editorials
Bruce Barcott
There exists no stronger evidence that a lifetime spent inpursuit of the summit does not inevitably lead to insight, wisdom and happiness....After all his trips...Breashears is still struggling to understand why he and so many others throw themselves at its mercy every year.—The New York Times Book Review
Publishers Weekly -
Possibly the most interesting aspect of this book is how improbable it seems that Breashears (Mountain Without Mercy) ever lived to write it. An accomplished alpinist, Breashears not only recounts his numerous, dicey ascents of the planets peaks but also explores his motivation for doing so. Though he is an experienced cinematographer whose past employers range from PBS to Hollywood, Breashears is most widely known as the director of the IMAX film Everest. While filming the movie, Breashears and his crew were fortunate to avoid the unforgiving storm at the mountains summit that led to the death of eight people and was chronicled in Jon Krakauers Into Thin Air. Breashears uses that tragic season on Everest as a frame for a personal memoir. The focus is on how he stepped out of the shadow of his violent military father and discovered his passions for climbing and filmmaking. Some of his psychology is simplistic, but there is no doubt that Breashears is as serious about understanding his actions as he is about succeeding in them. And there is no shortage of action, whether he is scaling a 1000-foot vertical rock or narrowly escaping being swept off a cliff by a runaway tonnage of snow. Though at times the book is self-aggrandizing, a little ego can be tolerated in this largely engrossing work, and is, perhaps, only to be expected from someone who has four times scrabbled up the ice and rocks of Everest to reach the top of the world.Library Journal
Times Bks. 1999. c.240p. permanent paper. photogs. maps. ISBN 0-8129-3159-9. $23. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Bruce Barcott
There exists no stronger evidence that a lifetime spent inpursuit of the summit does not inevitably lead to insight, wisdom and happiness....After all his trips...Breashears is still struggling to understand why he and so many others throw themselves at its mercy every year.— The New York Times Book Review
Book Details
Published
May 1, 1999
Publisher
NewStar Media, Incorporated
Format
Audiobook
ISBN
9780787119553