"Riveting, detailed, and full of insighta refreshingly honest perspective on the tragic, selfish nature of our sport."Climbing magazine

"A death-haunted saga of the scalers of heaven...the same class and caliber (as) Into Thin Air." Kirkus Reviews

"A dramatic and romantic look at the greatest generation of climbers."Library Journal

"[A] gripping adventure sagaof life spent teetering on the edge of the abyss."Publishers Weekly

This gripping story of courage, achievement, and heartbreaking loss tells of Bonington's Boys, a band of climbers who reinvented mountaineering during the three decades after Everest's first ascent. Chris Bonington's inner circle included a dozen of the most renowned climbers, who took increasingly terrible risks on now legendary expeditions to the world's most fearsome peaks, and paid an enormous price. Most of them died in the mountains, leaving behind the hardest question of all: was it worth it?

Based on interviews with surviving climbers and others, as well as five decades of journals, expedition accounts, and letters, The Boys of Everest provides the closest thing to an answer that we will ever have. It offers riveting descriptions of what Bonington's Boys found in the mountains, as well as an understanding of what they lost there.