... gripping.

... [a] fast-paced survey of Himalayan mountaineering history.

... [a] thrilling though sometimes episodic and repetitive account of the extraordinary athletes, daredevils, visionaries, and fools who joined in the competition to scale the world’s highest peaks between the 1930s and the mid-1950s.

The World Beneath Their Feet contains plenty of rollicking stories, but reading it is nevertheless something of a trudge. To reach the end, intrepid readers must brave the blizzard of Ellsworth’s clumsy metaphors, tiptoe round his broken grammar, and skirt the yawning crevasses of hyperbole into which his prose frequently falls.

An epic account of the Great Himalayan Race.

Focusing on the 1930s and the war years of the 1940s, Ellsworth introduces some of those climbing pioneers here, effectively blending world events into the stories of the various treks.

Ellsworth...writes a comprehensive introduction to high-altitude mountaineering.

In vivid, novelistic prose, the author describes the significant expeditions and delivers engaging portraits of climbers from many different countries and their invaluable Sherpas.