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A magisterial history of the Himalaya: an epic story of peoples, cultures, and adventures among the world's highest mountains.
For centuries, the unique and astonishing geography of the Himalaya has attracted those in search of spiritual and literal elevation: pilgrims, adventurers, and mountaineers seeking to test themselves among the world's most spectacular and challenging peaks. But far from being wild and barren, the Himalaya has been home to a diversity of indigenous and local cultures, a crucible of world religions, a crossroads for trade, and a meeting point and conflict zone for empires past and present. In this landmark work, nearly two decades in the making, Ed Douglas makes a thrilling case for the Himalaya's importance in global history and offers a soaring account of life at the "roof of the world."
Spanning millennia, from the earliest inhabitants to the present conflicts over Tibet and Everest, Himalaya explores history, culture, climate, geography, and politics. Douglas profiles the great kings of Kathmandu and Nepal; he describes the architects who built the towering white Stupas that distinguish Himalayan architecture; and he traces the flourishing evolution of Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism that brought Himalayan spirituality to the world. He also depicts with great drama the story of how the East India Company grappled for dominance with China's emperors, how India fought Mao's Communists, and how mass tourism and ecological transformation are obscuring the bloody legacy of the Cold War.
Himalaya is history written on the grandest yet also the most human scale―encompassing geology and genetics, botany and art, and bursting with stories of courage and resourcefulness.
16 pages of illustrations, 4 color photographs
"Robust history of the vast South Asian mountain range and its hold on the imagination...A towering addition to any geography or mountaineering buff's library." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Written in elegant prose with sharply etched profiles of historical figures, this engrossing account offers a fresh, revealing portrait of a much-mythologized place." - Publishers Weekly
"An extraordinarily rich and wide investigation into the exhilarating story of the Himalaya. Ed Douglas knows this story in his bones, from his travels and a wonderful range of scholarship, which leaves him perfectly placed to fill a huge gap in our view of how the world fits together." - Michael Pye, author of The Edge of the World
This information about Himalaya was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ed Douglas is an award-winning writer with a passion for the Himalaya. The author of a dozen books, including a biography of Tenzing Norgay, he has reported from the region for more than twenty-five years, covering the Maoist insurgency in Nepal and the Tibetan occupation. He lives in Yorkshire, England.
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