All Fourteen 8,000ers

The story’s, the photos, and the legend himself totally amazing. Worth every penny!

Amazing stories.

Certainly Reinhold Messner is one of the greatest living mountaineers, and his ascents of all 14 8000 meter peaks, and the fact that he did it first, are very inspiring. Has he done all of these peaks in, as he would like the reader to believe, the best style possible? Others have done these climbs as well, perhaps in better style, alpine-style - just take a look at Andy Fanshawe and Stephen Venables "Himalaya Alpine Style", and Messner's accomplishment can be judged in perspective. The Catalans on Annapurna I's Face, Loretan, Troillet, Kukuzcka, Profit, Doug Scott, Alex McIntyre... there have been other climbers pursuing the same goals, with the same style, and Messner was not all that far ahead, and often his routes were not as technically demanding as many other climbers.He is a fascinating man, with a real ethos about what he does, and how he does it. But the man's ego is just too much often - and he is rather thin skined to boot, so he spends much of the book carping about his critics. And then thre are contributions from teammates, small side-articles, that are also usually a lot of fawning over Messner. The book constantly announces his importance and the uniqueness of the mighty Messner - it gets a bit nauseating after a while. For example, in one part, he describes some Tibetan jewlerey he wears, and how the Tibetans have come to regard him "as one of their own", and come up to touch him. Well, stricly speaking in Tibetan Buddhist concepts, were all are related, we are all one. He takes himself SOOOOOO seriously. The writing, as with most mountaineering books, is stilted, unimaginative, and filled with cliches. But at least you get the insights of a great mountaineer on some of his more interersting climbs - the Gasherbrum traverse, Kanchejunga, etc. The descriptions are all a bit truncated - put that together we the narcissistic qualities that marr the text, and you get an interesting but very uneven read.

This is a great reference and probably a must for every mountaineer or fan of mountaineering history's bookshelf or coffee table. Though Reinhold Messner has no shortage of critics, he is still the first man to make it up all the 14 8000m peaks. Hence, this book, with all its beautiful illustrations and photos, is a valuable historical reference.This book also lacks a lot of the "clutter" that is characteristic of Messner's books. The articles are basically quite straightforward and to the point. There is a fair bit of background information and some digressions, but still very well-edited and organised. Read what interests you and leave the rest. The layout of the book allows the reader to do that.

Great book

Great reading.

Although Reinhold's writing about his experiences are somewhat brief they are detailed and quite interesting. The photos in this book are fantastic. Would recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about mountain climbing. One slight drawback is this book is somewhat large in size so isn't quite as comfortable for a "bedtime" reader but because of that the photos are great.

Messner has provided a valued coffee table expose of his climbing, his life, and his fears.Color and b/w photos support the storied climbs of Messner. Value is added by the numerous friends and climbing colleagues who add their personal thoughts about Messner, acute descriptions of similar climbs, and a myriad of topics shared by climbers, not all of which are sympathetic to Messner.Messner's writing style leaves out the fluff, giving the writer only the gut intenseness that is Messner.

This is an amazing book by a person who has achieved the impossible (or what we conceived as impossible). He has climbed many mountains without oxygen and this book describes some of the techniques he uses to do this. It also describes the length of the climb and routes in detail and who climbed which mountain and when. One thing I love about this book is the amazing pictures. I might use some of these pictures as posters for my room.

Reinhold Messner is renowned as one of the foremost mountain climbers in the world. This is his succinctaccount of his climbs of the fourteen highest mountains in the world, all over 8000 meters in height.Beautiful pictures and schematics of his attack routes are shown. Obviously, to perform feats like thisrequires exemplary fitness, discernment, judgement and timing, together with an extraordinary amountof luck. Great reading for restless adventurers, hikers and fitness geeks. Missprint at page 128 whenlatitude and longitude numbers are inadvertently reversed.

A brilliant read

Very good product and nice packing... Totally satisfied 👍