This book is a history of how mountains and the human need to climb them have evolved over centuries in the human imagination. Macfarlane explores how geology developed in the 17th Century, how the experiences of fear, and of the sublime, led to exploration in the 18th and 19th Centuries, especially in the Alps, and how the Great Game tensions in and around Tibet between the British and the Russians culminated in attempts to 'conquer' Everest in the 1920s. Macfarlane, a climber himself, knows his history, science and literature, and writes engagingly about what mountains have meant to humans over time. His description of Mallory's attempts on Everest at the end of the book are particularly gripping. A terrific book.