WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 'The most exhilarating history of mountaineering ... a riveting read' - Jeremy Paxman Once we thought monsters lived there. In the Enlightenment we scaled them to commune with the sublime. Soon, we were racing to conquer their summits in the name of national pride. In this ground-breaking, classic work, Robert Macfarlane takes us up into the mountains: to experience their shattering beauty, the fear and risk of adventure, and to explore the strange impulses that have for centuries lead us to the world's highest places.

Robert Macfarlane is the author of Underland, Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways, Landmarks, and The Lost Words, co-created with Jackie Morris. Underland won the the Wainwright Prize 2019 and has been listed as a Guardian Best Book of the 21st Century. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and writes on environmentalism, literature and travel for publications including the Guardian, the Sunday Times and The New York Times.