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The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War and Everest: Recomandări New York Times

Autor Ed Caesar
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 12 noi 2020
'One of the best books ever written about the early attempts to conquer Everest. A fine, fine slice of history by a truly special writer who proves time and time again that he is among the best of his generation' Dan Jones, author ofThe Plantagenets
The untold story of Britain's most mysterious mountaineering legend - Maurice Wilson - and his heroic attempt to climb Everest alone.
In the 1930s, as official government expeditions set their sights on conquering Everest, a little-known World War I veteran named Maurice Wilson conceived his own crazy, beautiful plan: he would fly a Gipsy Moth aeroplane from England to Everest, crash land on its lower slopes, then become the first person to reach its summit - all utterly alone.
Wilson didn't know how to climb. He barely knew how to fly. But he had pluck, daring and a vision - he wanted to be the first man to stand on top of the world. Traumatised by his wartime experiences and leaving behind a trail of broken hearts, Wilson believed that Everest could redeem him.
This is the tale of an adventurer unlike any you have ever encountered: an unforgettable story about the power of the human spirit in the face of adversity. Maurice Wilson is a man written out of the history books - dismissed as an eccentric and a charlatan by many, but held in the highest regard by renowned mountaineers such as Reinhold Messner.The Moth and the Mountainrestores him to his rightful place in the annals of Everest and in doing so attempts to answer that eternal question - why do we climb mountains?
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780241262313
ISBN-10: 0241262313
Pagini: 288
Dimensiuni: 162 x 240 x 28 mm
Greutate: 0.48 kg
Editura: Penguin Books
Colecția Viking
Seria Recomandări New York Times

Locul publicării:London, United Kingdom

Notă biografică

Ed Caesar is forty years old. He lives in Manchester, and writes for the New Yorker. He has won eleven major journalism awards - including a British Press Award, PPA Writer of the Year and the 2014 Foreign Press Award for Journalist of the Year. His subjects have included conflict in central Africa, the world's longest tennis match, stolen art, money-laundering, and the trade in diamonds. His first book, Two Hours, won a Cross Sports Book Award in 2016.


Recenzii

'Why climb the world's highest mountain?For King and Country; for the glory of God; because it is there. Or, as for Maurice Wilson, because of an unhappy love affair, a wartime trauma, and a longing to get away from a life whose values are measured at the cash register.In Ed Caesar's telling, the hapless, defiant Wilson becomes an unexpected hero - an unforgettable inspiration for anyone who chafes at the limits of ordinary life'
'Ed Caesar has written a slim, ravishing chronicle that isabsolutely bursting with life - doomed romance, the dread of the battlefield, the lure of adventure, hair-raising tales of amateur aviation, and, above all, the beauty and madness of the quest to ascend Earth's tallest summit. Maurice Wilson is as rich and full of surprise and contradiction as a character in a novel, and through painstaking historical research, Caesar brings his hero back to vivid life in all his messy, inspiring, ultimately tragic glory.A major feat of reporting and elegant storytelling'
'The Moth and the Mountainis gripping and exquisite.A mad, magnificent, and moving tale'
'A story of adventure and war, of eccentricity and courage, of love and secrets and of the overwhelming urge one man had to climb the world's highest mountain.Ed Caesar writes like a dream, beautifully piecing together Maurice Wilson's life with compassion and intelligence. It's hard to imagine a finer tribute to one of Everest's forgotten heroes'
'A towering, tragic tale rescued from oblivion by Ed Caesar'smagnificent writing'
'Maurice Wilson was an amazing human being.Passionate, heroic, hilariously deluded, inspired, brave to the point of lunacy, determined, war damaged, lovelorn and gloriously unhinged.The Moth and the Mountainis a wonderful, elegiac account of an extraordinary life written with a wry, compassionate humour. It is clear that Ed Caesar loves his hero. I think I do too'
'The adventurer Maurice Wilson was a forgotten figure until Ed Caesar's brilliantly written book restored him to his rightful place in the annals of exploration... Caesar's book received enormous praise on publication last year and rightly so.This splendid tale is every bit as exciting as any adventure novel and deeply moving'
'This bonkers ripping yarn of derring-don't isa hell of a ride ...scrupulously researched ... Maurice Wilson was a one-off, quite outside the ordinary run of people, andThe Moth and the Mountainisa "sorry, beautiful, melancholy, crazy" tribute to a man who, like a leaf in autumn, burnt brightest just before he fell'
'An urgent and humane story that invites not mockery of a madman, but pity and admiration.A small classic of the biographer's art'
'What, in any hands, would be a remarkable story of derring-do becomes, thanks to Ed Caesar,a much deeper, affecting study of one marvellous eccentric and the forces that drove him to attempt the impossible. Magnificent'
'Caesar is a journalist with a novelist's eye for character ...Wilson's story is bonkers, but also beautiful. The profile Caesar builds iscompelling, colourful and warm- of a complex, contradictory man with admirable self-belief and a healthy disregard for class boundaries and national borders'(Book of the Week)
'A riveting tale of trauma, spiritual awakening and postwar derring-do... a gem of a book ... meticulously researched'(Book of the Week)
· 'The extraordinary story of how [Wilson] learned to fly and then undertook an epic solo journey to India in his flimsy Gypsy Moth plane is brilliantly told in this slim but captivating book...a testament to good old-fashioned British pluck'
'For anyone looking for a moment of escape from the mayhem of our world, this isa tremendous tale of adventure'
'I have a perhaps unhealthy love for books in which strange, solitary people wander into oblivion, and Ed Caesar'sThe Moth and the Mountainisone of the finest of the genre. A brilliant feat of storytelling and compassion'
'Meticulously reported, sublimely crafted ...both a gripping portrait of one man and a moving meditation on how stories can help us understand even the most elusive events and characters'
'A rollicking biography of an eccentric adventurer, and a sensitive study of the pressures that drove him... unlike the airy and ill-prepared Wilson, Mr Caesar, a journalist at theNew Yorker, grounds his story in patient archival sleuthing. Marrying extracts from Wilson's letters and diaries with lively prose,he winningly conveys the glamour and contradictions of this outlandish figure,bringing cinematic vividness to his escapades'
'An outstanding book . . .The Moth and the Mountainreturns readers to a romantic era when Everest was terra nova rather than an experience to be bought . . . the author, a contributing writer for theNew Yorker, is a talented storyteller with a flair for detail. . .Wilson's story is an entry less in the annals of mountaineering than in the Book of Life. That such an extraordinary person even existed is cause for celebration'
'Caesar delivers an evocative portrait of the life and times of British adventurer Maurice Wilson, who captivated the public's attention with his doomed attempt to climb Mount Everest in 1934 ... Caesar skilfully explores the political, intellectual, and spiritual movements of the era, as well as Wilson's psychic scars from the war ...this entertaining, well-researched chronicle is a valuable addition to mountaineering history'
'A wonderful adventure story, beautifully told.Based on years of painstaking archival research, Ed Caesar'sThe Moth and the Mountainbrings us a modern-day myth with a beguiling, impossible hero from a vanished era of empire, one man on an epic quest that isby turns gripping and heartbreaking'
'The Moth and the Mountainis a gripping story of heroism, adventure, madness and thwarted love, told with extraordinary empathy and intelligence.Ed Caesar is a writer of rare style and depth, and he has written a great and moving work of non-fiction'
'In the 1930s, an Englishman, Maurice Wilson - a traumatized veteran of the Great War - decided he would fly to Mount Everest, crash-land on the slopes and climb to the summit alone. (Never mind that he was a novice pilot and had never climbed a mountain.) It's not a spoiler to say that things didn't go well, butCaesar puts the man, and his quest, in historical context'
'TheNew Yorker's Ed Caesar is one of the great narrative journalists writing today, andthis remarkable book is a beautifully-crafted page-turner.What compelled Maurice Wilson to board a fragile plane in 1933, with the intention of flying to Everest and climbing to its summit? Eccentricity, genius, an inter-war yearning for escape?You'll be gripped to the very last sentence'
'An engrossing biography ...credit to Caesar for rescuing such a splendid tale of an engaging maverick from the footnotes of Everest history.
'Praise is due to Ed Caesar for managing to tell this tale so well, becausethe sheer madness of Wilson's life would surely have thrown off all but the most sure-footed biographer.Caesar sets about it with fantastic energy and makes use of a marvellous collage of letters, diary entries, poetry, telegrams, interviews and archival iced gems.He is to be applauded for giving romantic, adamantine, lion-hearted Maurice Wilson his overdue day in the sun'
'Gripping at every turn... it's impossible not to root for Wilson'
'Engagingly depicts Wilson and his times in ebullient and well-written prose ...a widely appealing and affecting character study, microhistory, story of love and loss, and inquiry into some surprising effects of trauma and personal tragedy'
'Riveting...Caesar's biographical tale of Wilson rightly restores a footnoted figure of alpine history to the storied peaks of Mount Everest, where his body lays still today'
'A page turner of a book ...a masterclass in research'

Descriere

'One of the best books ever written about the early attempts to conquer Everest. A fine, fine slice of history by a truly special writer who proves time and time again that he is among the best of his generation' Dan Jones, author of The Plantagenets
The untold story of Britain's most mysterious mountaineering legend - Maurice Wilson - and his heroic attempt to climb Everest alone.
In the 1930s, as official government expeditions set their sights on conquering Everest, a little-known World War I veteran named Maurice Wilson conceived his own crazy, beautiful plan: he would fly a Gipsy Moth aeroplane from England to Everest, crash land on its lower slopes, then become the first person to reach its summit - all utterly alone.
Wilson didn't know how to climb. He barely knew how to fly. But he had pluck, daring and a vision - he wanted to be the first man to stand on top of the world. Traumatised by his wartime experiences and leaving behind a trail of broken hearts, Wilson believed that Everest could redeem him.
This is the tale of an adventurer unlike any you have ever encountered: an unforgettable story about the power of the human spirit in the face of adversity. Maurice Wilson is a man written out of the history books - dismissed as an eccentric and a charlatan by many, but held in the highest regard by renowned mountaineers such as Reinhold Messner. The Moth and the Mountain restores him to his rightful place in the annals of Everest and in doing so attempts to answer that eternal question - why do we climb mountains?