To the Summit: Fifty Mountains that Lure, Inspire and Challenge

Rating:
Summary: Pity from the shelf space ...
Review: I don't like this book at all. It has been hastily put together. The quality of the pictures is often mediocre. And the words accompanying the picture are a mere rehash of well-known facts. Other reviewers have already commented on typographic errors. Despite its size, this is not an inspiring book.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Book, too many typos
Review: This is a excellent book and I highly recommend it. It has an abundance of wonderful stories, gorgeous photography, and unfortunately, a huge number of glaring typographic errors. I have rarely seen a book so thoughtfully designed contain so many mistakes! I hope they get it right in the next printing.

Rating:
Summary: a worthy compilation of world wide mountaineering
Review: This text may well qualify as the "mother" of all coffee table books. As a matter of fact the librarian who checked it out to me remarked that by merely screwing 4 legs into this monster you could build a coffee table worthy of holding the remainder of your coffee table book collection! This book is much more than the pretty face many large format books display, there is a lot of substance worth reading between the covers. Overall a worthy compilation of world wide mountaineering. It contains many historical glimpses and a wide range of international climber bio's from 1800's to present day. Photos range in quality from excellent to grainy and underexposed. While many historical photos are included it is of course expected they would not be up to today's photo standards for clarity however many apparent recent photo selections either did not stand up to the publishing and enlargement demands or editing was compromised for packing the pages with images. Since climbing of course does not always take place in picture perfect lighting there will of course need to be representative samples to illustrate less than ideal weather conditions. Page 231 full page picture of the east face of Mt. Whitney has been reverse printed. I was distressed to find such an obvious error in printing for an otherwise incredible book I did not have the time or resources to verify all the other mountain profile photos but I might like to challenge the definition/graphic chosen for CAM. It is quite the resource...take a look for yourself.