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No comments about Insight Guides Indian Wildlife (Insight Country/Regional Guides-Foreign).

No comments about Hyderabad.

No comments about Jim Corbett's India (Oxford Paperbacks).

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5 comments about K2: Challenging the Sky.

1. This book is a very good one. I found it to be the best companion (for the beautiful photos in large format e for showing clearly the several attempted routes on K2) to another 5-star book, "K2, Triumph and Tragedy". Bravo Roberto Mantovani!



2. -although the text may just have suffered in the translations. If you want to see the single best collection of K2 photographs I've ever seen, and I have them all, this is the book for you. A bargain at anything less than about $250.00, it's bound and published beautifully (at least my copy was!)



3. If you've read all the classic historical books of ascents on K2 except this one, your library is incomplete. The power of this book is in part within it's outstanding photography and also has to do with how well it pulls so much information together. This is a complex mountain but the information is presented clearly such that one feels more comfortable with the different sides of the mountain and their challenges to the climber.



4. K2 is an endlessly fascinating. Beautiful and cruel, savage and mighty, mysterious and far away - seen by few and successfully ascended by even fewer - it draws and repels simultaneously.

   Robert Mantovani does a superb job on the magnificent photographs, all in color, beautifully sharp and clear. The vistas and detail take your breath away. A special commendation goes to Patricia Lovicetti, the Graphic Designer. At [item price], it is a bargain at twice the price. It is a BIG book (10" x 14"), so it will need a place of honor on the coffee table.

   Most of the text is from Kurt Diemberger's previously published "Endless Knot" (though this fact is not mentioned in the book). However, the pictures are well captioned and informative. Mr. Diemberger is a legend, the only man living with two first ascents of 8,000-meter mountains to his credit. He is also is among the elite few who have successfully ascended and descended K2, though at terrible personal cost. (See "Endless Knot")

   This book would be a terrific gift to a climbing enthusiast or just as a wonderful indulgence to yourself!




5. I bought this book years ago and never tire at the wonderful pictures of this austere and formidible peak that most mountaineers in the know call the toughest mountain to climb in the world. The photographs are classic and inspiring...I frequently pull it out and marvel at the stark beauty of this deadly peak.
   
   One would buy this type of book mainly for the pictures. From the perspective of the meager text, however, this book leaves some things to be desired. It was published after the Robert Marshall translation of Walter Bonatti's "Mountains Of My Life". In Bonatti's book, Compagnini and Lacedelli are shown in an inadvertantly published photo (published shortly after the 1954 Italian K-2 Expedition before Expedition Leader Ardito Desio and the two summit climbers got their story straight) in full oxygen mask on the summit. It makes absolutely no sense to be wearing that mask with empty oxygen tanks and therefore suffocating while on the summit of K-2. The excuse that these two carried these heavy/primitive oxygen sets to the summit supposedly after they ran out of oxygen with considerable distance yet to go is also absurd. That story obviously was concocted so that Bonatti could be accused of using the oxygen for himself while trying to survive the open bivouac with the Hunza porter Mahdi.
   
   The bottom line is that the Italian 1954 expedition is rocked with scandal and recriminations, and the authors of this book should note that the record has now been set straight with the publication of those summit pictures. Further, Lacedelli in the past two years has come out to corraborate Bonatti's claims, stating that he and Compagnini deliberately left Bonatti and Mahdi (who suffered severe frostbite) out in the open so they alone could use the oxygen Bonatti/Mahdi carried for their own summit attempt. This effectively eliminated any chance Bonatti had to even attempt a summit without oxygen, as he was in no condition to do so after the epic bivouac. Both Bonatti/Mahdi were very fortunate to have survived what at that time was the highest bivouac to date in the open...while Compagnini/Lacedelli were snug in their warm tent several hundred feet away. Without that oxygen, Compagnin/Lacedelli would not have summitted K-2, and the expedition would have been a failure. So why did they deny Bonatti credit where credit is due?
   
   The history of the first ascent of K-2 needs to be revised in all future books which deal with this subject. Obviously, the official Italian expedition report published by Ardito Desio was a fabrication...Desio apparently had no shame to slander Bonatti as he had for little or no apparent reason other than to try to destroy Bonatti. This fabrication diminishes the otherwise outstanding accomplishment which this expedition achieved during the race to climb this awe-inspiring peak.
   
   Historical inaccuracies and lack of fact-check aside, buy this book for the pictures...they are truly inspiring.