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Everest, Inc

The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World

By Cockrell, Will

Read by Simonelli, Pete

9.99 hrs • 8 CDs • Unabridged

Genre: NON-FICTION  /  BIOGRAPHIES & MEMOIRS

Release Date: 04/01/2024

© 2024 by Simon & Schuster

ISBN No : 9781797169750

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$57.90

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Featuring original interviews with mountain guides and climbers—including Jimmy Chin and Conrad Anker—this vivid and authoritative adventure history chronicles one of the least likely industries on Earth: guided climbing on Mount Everest.

Anyone who has read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air or has seen a recent photo of climbers standing in line to get to the top of Everest may think they have the mountain pretty well figured out. It’s an extreme landscape where bad weather and incredible altitude can occasionally kill, but more so an overcrowded, trashed-out recreation destination where rich clients pad their egos—and social media feeds—while exploiting local Sherpas.

There’s some truth to these clichés, but they’re a sliver of the story. Unlike any book to date, Everest, Inc. gets to the heart of the mountain through the definitive story of its greatest invention: the Himalayan guiding industry. It all began in the 1980s with a few boot-strapping entrepreneurs who paired raw courage and naked ambition with a new style of expedition planning. Many of them are still living and climbing today, and as a result of their astonishing success, ninety percent of the people now on Everest are clients or employees of guided expeditions.

Studded with quotes from original interviews with more than a hundred western and Sherpa climbers, clients, writers, filmmakers, and even a Hollywood actor, Everest, Inc. foregrounds the voices of the people who have made the mountain what it is today. And while there is plenty of high-altitude drama in unpacking the last forty years of Everest tragedy and triumph, it ultimately transcends stereotypes and tells the uplifting counternarrative of the army of journeymen and women who have made people’s dreams come true, and of the Nepalis who are pushing the industry into the future.

“There are more worlds at the top of the world than most of us know. The Everest guiding industry has a strange, gnarled history and Will Cockrell has turned it into a fair-minded, engrossing tale. It’s a book full of unforgettable characters in a spectacular setting that's both physically and morally treacherous.”
— 
William Finnegan, staff writer at the New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life 

“Will Cockrell’s 
Everest, Inc. is a fast-moving, nuanced account of the peak's transformation from the ultimate mountaineering challenge into a booming business opportunity. Beginning with Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's historic conquest in 1953, Cockrell recounts how a colorful cast of moguls, entrepreneurial guides, and Sherpa visionaries expanded access to the summit and raked in big bucks in the process. His book is both a cautionary tale of the dangers of overexposure and a celebration of what remains the greatest terrestrial adventure of them all.”
— 
Joshua Hammer, New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and The Falcon Thief

“It’s high time our collective consciousness got an update on what it really means to climb Everest. In the deeply researched and cinematic 
Everest, Inc., Cockrell has mapped a new route expertly. Whether you want to climb the world's tallest mountain or laugh at those masochistic and wealthy enough to try, this is a page-turner."
— 
Diana Helmuth, author of How to Suffer Outside and The Witching Year

“Although Mount Everest perpetually makes headlines, there have been precious few attempts to objectively chronicle its tumultuous recent history. With deft storytelling and in-depth research, Will Cockrell fills that void, providing a kaleidoscopic view that honors many different perspectives—most important, that of the local Sherpa guides who call the Himalayas home. Whether you are thinking about taking a crack at the world’s highest peak, or are simply an armchair mountaineer trying to make sense of the complex dynamics driving the modern Everest industry, 
Everest, Inc. should be required reading.”
— 
Freddie Wilkinson, professional climber, documentary filmmaker, and author of One Mountain Thousand Summits