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Rating: 
Summary: An Epic tale of one mans life!
Review: A must read, and epic story of Anatoli Boukreev.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Insight
Review: Anatoli Boukreev was one of the most remarkable mountaineers in history. This book gives the reader great insight into Boukreev's thoughts, as well as the Soviet culture. Having read many other books, the similarities between Soviet athletes, chess masters and intellectuals is stunning. Anatoli Boukreev hints at the pressure placed upon him and others prior to the fall of his government. "Above the Clouds" has excellent narratives about climbing, but it is much more than that. His writings about the Everest tragedy are striking.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Insight
Review: Anatoli Boukreev was one of the most remarkable mountaineers in history. This book gives the reader great insight into Boukreev's thoughts, as well as the Soviet culture. Having read many other books, the similarities between Soviet athletes, chess masters and intellectuals is stunning. Anatoli Boukreev hints at the pressure placed upon him and others prior to the fall of his government. "Above the Clouds" has excellent narratives about climbing, but it is much more than that. His writings about the Everest tragedy are striking.
Rating:
Summary: The truth - from a real mountaineer.
Review: This book is based on the journal of Anatoli Boukreev and his diary of mountaineering. The book does a great job of describing his life before large expeditions and his struggle to make it to the top. The book does also focuses on his life and relationships as well as his personal accounts of his adventures. The journal rarely goes into his deep feelings which gives a better understanding of how he was as person. However, when it does go deep, it speak deeply and touches the essense of mountaineering.
Rating:
Summary: An amazing account of an amazing person!
Review: This book is based on the journal of Anatoli Boukreev and his diary of mountaineering. The book does a great job of describing his life before large expeditions and his struggle to make it to the top. The book does also focuses on his life and relationships as well as his personal accounts of his adventures. The journal rarely goes into his deep feelings which gives a better understanding of how he was as person. However, when it does go deep, it speak deeply and touches the essense of mountaineering.
Rating: 
Summary: Above the Clouds Goes Above and Beyond Expectations
Review: This book is excellent reading for "armchair enthusiasts", serious mountaineers, or anyone in between. Before reading this book I did not even know who Anatoli was. Now, I see him as one of the true great mountaineers. I really related to his feelings for the mountains, and I share many of his philosophies regarding climbing. Reaching the summit is not success; to be successful, you must make it safely down. Even if Mallory and Irvine reached the summit of Everest, they didn't achieve success by living to tell about it.
As a mountaineer and author myself, I was very pleased how easy I could relate to Anatoli's feelings and philosophies about the sport of mountaineering. On page 123 he states that he treated the mountains "like cathedrals where worship gives you strength and strips off the scale of ordinary life." He also told a different version of the accounts of the disastrous climbing month in May 1996 on Mt. Everest, which catapulted high altitude mountaineering to the front pages of newspapers around the world. I still view Reinhold Messner as the best mountaineer of all time, but had Anatoli lived longer he would have surely closed the gap.TJ Burr
Mountaineer/Author
"Rocky Mountain Adventure Collection"
Rating:
Summary: Above the Clouds Goes Above and Beyond Expectations
Review: This book is excellent reading for "armchair enthusiasts", serious mountaineers, or anyone in between. Before reading this book I did not even know who Anatoli was. Now, I see him as one of the true great mountaineers. I really related to his feelings for the mountains, and I share many of his philosophies regarding climbing. Reaching the summit is not success; to be successful, you must make it safely down. Even if Mallory and Irvine reached the summit of Everest, they didn't achieve success by living to tell about it.
As a mountaineer and author myself, I was very pleased how easy I could relate to Anatoli's feelings and philosophies about the sport of mountaineering. On page 123 he states that he treated the mountains "like cathedrals where worship gives you strength and strips off the scale of ordinary life." He also told a different version of the accounts of the disastrous climbing month in May 1996 on Mt. Everest, which catapulted high altitude mountaineering to the front pages of newspapers around the world. I still view Reinhold Messner as the best mountaineer of all time, but had Anatoli lived longer he would have surely closed the gap. TJ Burr
Mountaineer/Author
"Rocky Mountain Adventure Collection"
Rating:
Summary: The Soul of a Mountain Climber
Review: This is a terrific book by one of the most famous and least-understood mountain climbers of our time. Boukreev was known to only a small group of mountaineering insiders before the publication of Krakauer's Into Thin Air and then Boukreev's own bestseller The Climb. Here, he reveals himself to be a thoughtful, poetic yet tough-minded, and extremely intelligent writer. This book not only covers adventures on Everest, Mt. McKinley, K2, Annapurna, and elsewhere, but also reveals little known and fascinating details about Russia and Kazakhstan and the USSR climbing culture in which Boukreev was raised. Anyone interested in climbing will love this book. (It has terrific photos too, most of them taken by Boukreev from the tops of the peaks he scaled.)
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