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Rating:  -
A very poorly written book in terms of organization. But it confirms my impression that people who climb Everest are mostly narcissistic, selfish, self-centered people whose lives are meaningless. Climb the Rocky Mountains or go help someone if you are so bored with life. The author is no different psychologically than the other selfless losers who go to Everest.
Rating:  -
Anyone who hasn't heard by now that Everest has in recent years become a magnet for fools, scoundrels, parasites, and mountebanks of every type, variety and nationality must have been living in a cave. This work gathers together abundant further evidence of this lamentable fact.
Kodas provides enough examples of villainy to make for reading both fascinating and depressing. He also describes considerable gratuitous tragedy. The detritus on the mountain contains not just used oxygen canisters and garbage but also corpses. The Sherpa guides and bearers, a group that has been romanticized over the years, come off no better than anyone else; many are cowardly, lazy, greedy and dishonest.
Exciting as the story is, there are problems. In attempting to cover every scandal, theft, brawl and mishap he has heard about, Kodas wanders into too many tangents. The narrative is meandering and discursive. Despite all the gripping details, there are also a lot of unexplained gaps in the story, particularly regarding Kodas's own role and that of his wife in the Connecticut expedition he helped to assemble.
Among those recruited for the Connecticut expedition are a thuggish Romanian émigré and his ambitious and manipulative wife, an illiterate Sherpa whom the Romanian is in the habit of beating up. Other members of the ragtag group are little better; the only thing they seem to have in common is a desire to climb Everest on the cheap. Why the author assisted in putting together so disreputable a gang, which soon falls apart in bitter rivalries and angry disputes over money, gear and thefts, is a mystery. Was it ignorance or naiveté? Or was it cynicism, knowing that a good yarn could be spun from it?
Kodas himself sought to climb Everest in 2004 and 2006 though he appears to lack the required skills and experience. He fails, though he returns relatively unscathed which is not true of many others who suffer death or irreparable physical damage.
All of which raises the question underlying the entire sordid saga: what is it that annually propels hundreds of people from all over the globe to undertake a mission which is hugely expensive, enormously physically taxing, extremely dangerous, and for which there is little reward?
It is a compulsion no rational explanation can sustain. But as an old saying goes: "The hellbent usually get there".
Rating: -
I found this book poorly organized. It was as if the author threw all the pages of his manuscript in the air and once they hit the floor he gathered them up and bound them into a book. It jumps from Everest to South America to Pakistan to the US and back again and it has very little to do with the secondary title "The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed". If you are hoping for another "In to Thin Air" quality book you are going to have to look elsewhere.
One of the previous reviewers used the term "sour grapes" and by the time I got to the end of this book I had the same feeling. Since he is a journalist (pssst .... Michael, don't quit your day job!!!) I got the feeling he was using this book as his chance to get back at virtually everyone he had ever met.
Rating:  -
First off I paid way too much for this book. Buy it used, I don't think it's worth the price I paid.
It starts out interesting but bogs down. I was expecting to read about a long list of incidents on the mountain. Instead the author briefly touches on a few incidents but focuses mostly on two bad individuals and what they've done, Gustavo L. and George D. I have no doubt that these guys are what the author says, but I got the point without all the extra detail. In addition, half the book has the appearance of airing out dirty laundry as George D. is his neighbor. The author even has a couple of photos of this guy. A book slamming one's neighbor isn't what I wanted.
Rating: -
Waste of time. Self-indulgent musings from an also-ran. Didn't make it the second trip either. Hmmmm
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