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Rating: 
Summary: High but dry
Review: This is a coffee-table book for climber wannabe's who might want to pretend they're going to climb some of the great ridges of the Himalaya. Most of the photos are pretty good, but the maps are sloppily drawn, and the writing style is about as bone dry as you can get--it's hard to make routes on the overwhelming ridges and cols of the high Himalayas look and sound dull, but by God, the authors really managed to do it. Then again, the authors haven't had much success on these climbs themselves--[...]--clinical studies of passionate endeavors untainted by personal expertise. I am dumbfounded that a couple of reviewers claimed to love this book, but then again, some people also claim to love year-old fruit cake.
Rating: 
Summary: It is a good book
Review: Unfortunately, recent reviewers have focused more on the achievments of the authors themselves than what has been written in the book. It is a great book with loads of info on many different great routes done in the only proper style, i.e. alpine style. There are many references to the original articles, if you ever plan to have some expeditions to the area described in the book, as well as more general references to books of the first ascents of the mountains described and it that respect very resourceful. Also, I think it is one of the virtues that the book is not written in an overpassionate, and boosting manner as most autobiographic books, but rather describes in a very admiring way the great achievments of extreme alpinism in the Himalaya. If you want to know more about the greatest achievments in Alpine climbing in recent years this book does give you a great overview of some of the most facinating (and craziest) climbs. I agree that some of the maps are not very good and that there could have been more depth in the description of the climbs, but the references should help someone wanting some more info.
Rating: 
Summary: Ho-Hum
Review: Yet another coffee-table book on climbing the Himalayas, this time with a purported "Alpine-Style" aesthetic binding it all together. Unfortunately, many of the photos tend to be a bit amaturish, the writing uninteresting, which is saying alot given the fascinating subject matter the authors had to deal with. The gung-ho climbing aesthetic is also questionable, given the authors' own backgrounds. Plenty of other excellent coffee-table books have been written about climbing the pristine parts of the high Himalaya, in terms of photo quality and relevance, this one doesn't really compete.
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