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Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest, by Wade Davis
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On June 6, 1924, two men set out from a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge just below the lip of Mount Everest’s North Col. George Mallory, thirty-seven, was Britain’s finest climber. Sandy Irvine was a young Oxford scholar of twenty-two with little previous mountaineering experience. Neither of them returned.
In this magisterial work of history and adventure, based on more than a decade of prodigious research in British, Canadian, and European archives, and months in the field in Nepal and Tibet, Wade Davis vividly re-creates British climbers’ epic attempts to scale Mount Everest in the early 1920s. With new access to letters and diaries, Davis recounts the heroic efforts of George Mallory and his fellow climbers to conquer the mountain in the face of treacherous terrain and furious weather. Into the Silence sets their remarkable achievements in sweeping historical context: Davis shows how the exploration originated in nineteenth-century imperial ambitions, and he takes us far beyond the Himalayas to the trenches of World War I, where Mallory and his generation found themselves and their world utterly shattered. In the wake of the war that destroyed all notions of honor and decency, the Everest expeditions, led by these scions of Britain’s elite, emerged as a symbol of national redemption and hope.
Beautifully written and rich with detail, Into the Silence is a classic account of exploration and endurance, and a timeless portrait of an extraordinary generation of adventurers, soldiers, and mountaineers the likes of which we will never see again.
- Sales Rank: #401834 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Knopf
- Published on: 2011-10-18
- Released on: 2011-10-18
- Format: Deckle Edge
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 1.73" w x 6.48" l, 2.43 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 672 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, October 2011: It’s tempting to call Wade Davis’s magnificent Into the Silence an Everest of a book. But that would be misleading. It is more like K2: challenging, technically complex, and hugely rewarding upon completion. The book starts off not with mountaineering, but with vivid, novelistic descriptions of the horrors of the First World War. Years of waste and destruction in the trenches, Davis argues, “led a desperate nation to embrace the assault on Everest as a gesture of imperial redemption.” Those who endured attempts on the summit all bore the scars of the Great War—and they were drawn to the mountain by an almost contradictory desire for conquest and spiritual ablution. At the center of it all is Mallory, whose eventual disappearance effectively closed that chapter in mountaineering. His utterance “because it’s there” became a new war cry, but he climbed for deeper reasons entirely. -- Chris Schluep
Review
“Davis’s book, ten years in the writing, is highly absorbing narrative . . . A heroic attempt to capture the scale of the undertaking to conquer the highest mountain on earth.”
—Michael Jeffries, The Newark Star-Ledger
“A magnificent, audacious venture . . . Into the Silence is quite unlike any other mountaineering book. It not only spins a gripping Boy’s Own yarn about the early British expeditions to Everest, but investigates how the carnage of the trenches bled into a desire for redemption at the top of the world. Many of those Himalayan explorers, including Mallory, had served in the corpse-ridden fields of northern France. Indeed, of the 26 men who climbed in the three expeditions, 20 had seen front-line action. Six had been severely wounded, two others hospitalized by disease at the front, and one treated for shell shock. All had seen dozens of friends and countrymen die. For these veterans, the author argues, death had lost its power . . . At its heart, Into the Silence is an elegy for a lost generation.”
—Ed Caesar, The Sunday Times (Front cover)
“A gripper of a read . . . Silence revives the cliff’s-edge drama of those Jazz age climbs and drives home the tragedy of Mallory’s death.”
—Bruce Barcott, Outside
“The men in this story had, for the most part, been young in 1914, bright and energetic and full of dreams. By 1918 those who had survived had seen and done things that no one should have to know about, and Davis does a magnificent job detailing their experiences, setting up the rest of the story—the expeditionary saga—as a logical response, even an inspired rejoinder to the soul-destroying realities of war. . . it is perhaps the book’s signature achievement that [Davis] keeps the narrative zipping along toward its inexorable and tragic conclusion while so thoroughly and persuasively contextualizing key events.”
—Christina Thompson, The Boston Globe
“This profoundly ambitious book aims high itself, because it sets the subject of Everest in a specific historical context . . . . Davis’s monumental work ranges . . . widely through the matter of Everest, both on and off the mountain, with harrowing descriptions of life and death on the Western Front, with frank dissections of rivalries, motives, inadequacies and confusions, and measured character studies.”
—Jan Morris, The Telegraph
“A meticulous recreation . . . The death in 1912 of Captain Scott and his companions in the Antarctic set a precedent of sacrifice for the generation of young British men who, a few years later, would hurl themselves into the maelstrom of the Great War. That Scott’s expedition was, according to later accounts, doomed by incompetent leadership only makes its failure seem more prophetic. Now, in Wade Davis’s magnificent new book, the remaining goal of imperial exploration is seen as an outcome of—and response to—the First World War. While Scott’s expedition was, in some ways, an exercise in heroic futility, the conquest of Mount Everest could help to exorcise the massed ghosts of the dead.”
—Geoff Dyer, The Guardian
“[A] meticulous history . . . Culminating in detailed accounts of the ascents that astutely weigh events and controversies, this vital contribution to Everest literature should rivet readers.”
—Gilbert Taylor, Booklist
“The First World War, the worst calamity humanity has ever inflicted on itself, still reverberates in our lives. In its immediate aftermath, a few young men who had fought in it went looking for a healing challenge, and found it far from the Western Front. In recreating their astonishing adventure, Wade Davis has given us an elegant meditation on the courage to carry on.”
—George F. Will
“I was captivated. Wade Davis has penned an exceptional book on an extraordinary generation. They do not make them like that anymore. And there would always only ever be one Mallory. From the pathos of the trenches to the inevitable tragedies high on Everest this is a book deserving of awards. Monumental in its scope and conception it nevertheless remains hypnotically fascinating throughout. A wonderful story tinged with sadness.”
—Joe Simpson, author of Touching the Void
“Into the Silence is utterly fascinating, and grippingly well-written. With extraordinary skill Wade Davis manages to weave together such disparate strands as Queen Victoria’s Indian Raj, the ‘Great Game’ of intrigue against Russia, the horrors of the Somme, and Britain’s obsession to conquer the world’s highest peak, all linking to that terrible moment atop Everest when Mallory fell to his death. The mystery of whether he and Irving ever reached the summit remains tantalizingly unsolved.”
—Alistair Horne, author of The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916
“Into the Silence is a breathtaking triumph. An astonishing piece of research, it is also intensely moving, evoking the courage, chivalry, and sacrifice that drove Mallory and his companions through the war and to ever greater heights.”
—William Shawcross, author of The Queen Mother
“Wade Davis’s mesmerizing telling of George Mallory’s fabled story gives new and revealing weight to the significance of this post-war era and to his dazzlingly accomplished and courageous companions. Into the Silence succeeds not only because Davis’s research is prodigious, but because every sentence has been struck with conviction, every image evoked with fierce reverence—for the heartbreaking twilight era, for the magnificent resilience of its survivors, for their mission, for Mallory, for his mountain. An epic worth of its epic.”
—Caroline Alexander, author of The Endurance and The War That Killed Achilles
About the Author
Wade Davis is the best-selling author of more than a dozen books, including The Serpent and the Rainbow and One River, and is an award-winning anthropologist. He currently holds the post of National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and divides his time between Washington, D.C., and northern British Columbia.
Most helpful customer reviews
153 of 155 people found the following review helpful.
Show me a hero...
By Nathan Webster
George Mallory is one of the names that those interested in Mt. Everest probably know in some detail. He's a legend, the man who disappeared not far from Everest's peak in 1924, and leading to the mystery if Hillary and Norgay were actually the first two to make the summitt.
But, often, that's ALL he is, just a legend, without a person behind all the effort. That's what he was to me. Sort of "this other guy tried to climb Everest, but he didn't make it." Then when he was found in 1999, it added to the legend, but still not the person. I thought it was neat at the time, finding him after all those years; a mystery solved.
"Into the Silence" provides the context and combination of vast research so a reader sees Mallory as the full-color adventurer of his time. It wasn't that he simply set out to climb Everest; what makes the story so vast is author Wade Davis' careful walkthrough of the decades of planning and imagination that were required by him and many others for years before his climb. Davis describes the entire story, in pinpoint - often heart-wrenching, though sometimes boring - detail. It makes the reader appreciate how impossible the 1924 effort really was, how so far ahead of their time were Mallory and Sandy Irvine. It's fair to compare it to the moon landing - it never should have worked, not with the equipment they had. And unfortunately, for Mallory and Irvine it didn't work.
The epic scope takes readers from the World War I battlefields to colonial India to Everest's North Col in equal detai and description. No part of the journey receives lesser treatment.
Sometime that is too much. The book is nearly 700 pages, and of course it could be edited. Some of the early history of Tibet-English encounters is important, but overwhelms some early chapters. With dozens of relevant names, there are times the 'characters' run together and I had to flip back pages to remember who they were. But, Davis clearly decided to err on the side of comphrehensive information. It might slow down at times, but that's an acceptable flaw. The discovery of Everest, the long process to scout, plot and scheme the best way to make an attempt, all build the narrative.
The World War I scenes are ghastly. One has to wonder that if network television had presented live footage from the trenches of the Somme if there would ever have been another war; one especially wonders how the veterans of that war on either side would send their sons to fight another one in barely 20 years. English newspapers presented lies about "victories" and its no wonder that the deep cynicism of returning veterans like Mallory would lead them to far-off adventures of impossible dreams. After WWI, I can't see how any veteran could go back to a normal life.
The men are far from perfect - they are filled with colonial prejudices, upper-class snobbery and petty jealousies; but the flaws show the real people behind the effort.
The book is five-stars, but it's silly to even measure it by that scale. It's a human tragedy within humanity's best efforts. Like the Challenger and Columbia astronauts weren't trying to be national martyrs, when you see Mallory on the page - Mallory and all who helped him - you realize that Mallory wasn't trying to be a legend or mystery; he wanted to achieve this mighty goal and then come back down.
91 of 98 people found the following review helpful.
Extraordinarily Detailed Drama of the NEAR Conquest of Everest!!!! - FIVE STARS
By Richard of Connecticut
If you have any interest at all in understanding what it is like to attempt to conquer the tallest mountain in the world, your search has ended. This is the book for you. As you know, sometimes a book can surprise you. Expecting one thing the reader is startled to find another. This is the way it is with Wade Davis' treatment of George Mallory's three attempts to be the first person to climb to the summit of Mount Everest. No worthwhile detail is spared in the writing of this book.
Davis accomplishes three major goals in writing this book, whether they were intended or not we do not know, but this is what you get out of pouring your energy into this book.
1st You will understand mountain climbing. You will learn more about the subject than you could possibly want to know. I would think that this book should be mandatory reading for anyone who is involved in this sport. The agony, the pain, the skills needed, and the sheer willpower to climb this mountain or any mountain is clearly stated, and done so in a powerful narrative that will live beyond the book. You feel the pain of the climbers, and the exhilaration of each success. When they are disappointed, so are you.
2nd You will learn more about World War I referred to at the time as the Great War than you would learn, if you read a book entirely devoted to the war. Author Wade Davis has captured the war in all its detail. From trench warfare, to Mustard gas to the futility of the decisions that were made that unnecessarily cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of English boys in the prime of their lives. No doubt is left in the readers mind that England basically lost its status as the number one military power in the world when it lost a generation of its youth - the country simply never recovered.
3rd You will understand English society, and this specific period of history from about 1924 to 1925. What it means to be part of a class and never able to leave that class? What non-acceptance is like, simply because you did not attend the right schools, or come from the correct family background. There's a reason why generations later when English bands become famous, the players like the Beatles, and others choose to live overseas and not in their native England. It's not just taxation. It's about leaving behind class structure, and freedom. John Lennon to his death always referred to himself as working class.
The BASIS of INTO THE SILENCE
From the 1800's into our present era, mankind has been climbing mountains. As an example the Swiss Alpine Club was founded in 1863. Most climbing occurred in European during attempts to climb European mountains. The real quest occurred beginning in the 1900's with the desire to attempt to climb the Himalayan Mountains many of which were 10,000 to 15,000 feet higher and much more difficult to climb than mountains in Europe. Mount Everest at the summit reaches a height of 29,035.
ORGANIZATION of INTO THE SILENCE
There are 13 chapters in this 576 page narrative, and there are many players. The star however is George Mallory born in 1886, he would go on to take part in three separate expeditions to Mount Everest beginning in the early 1920's. More on Mallory later.
What the author does so successfully is bring each participant in the Everest expeditions into the book in different sections and then spends pages going through the individual biographies. A very large part of each person's background is their experiences in World War I. No horrific detail of battles fought is spared in an attempt to have the reader fully understand what that war was like, and how it affected each soldier for the rest of their lives, and more specifically, each mountain climber.
As a reader I began to understand the Great War and fill in the gaps in my knowledge. The book captured a reality that could never be portrayed in the movies because no one would sit still and watch the reality. These men were formed by their experiences in the war, and it is clear how badly scarred they were by these experiences. Essentially England never recovered and would lose its standing in the world. World War II would simply finish them as a world power in spite of the fact that they were the victors.
THE STORY
George Mallory's three attempts to conquer Mount Everest is what this book is all about. History records that each of Mallory's attempts failed. There is drama in this book. There is action, and pain, and fear, and always HOPE. It is the hope of conquering a goal accompanied by unbelievable hardship in the attempt to realize the goal, which is standing on the summit of the tallest mountain in the world, even if only for a moment.
There is always the element of LUCK. Think about it, one moment you are within a 1000 feet of the summit, looking out 100 miles at unlimited mountains in one direction. The temperature is a pleasant 30 degrees - no wind. An hour later, a storm is coming in from the other direction. Temperatures drop 40 degrees in that hour. The wind goes to 60 miles an hour. You can't stand, you are fighting for your life. Whether you live or die is up to forces you do not control. In the end, the elements can break you, no matter how strong your body is how strong willed you are.
Perhaps you are that strong in both your mind and your body, but one of your companions breaks down. What do you do? Climb to the summit alone and succeeding because you left someone else to die a 1000 feet below? Do you instead abandon the summit and help your companion make it back down to camp and save his life. This is precisely what happened to George Finch in the 1922 expedition. Finch would have made the summit. He was using oxygen and Mallory who preceded him by a day did not. George Finch was accompanied by Geoffrey Bruce, and when Bruce could not go on, Finch made the decision to save Bruce's life rather than go on to fame and fortune. He chose honor.
There is one point in the book when Mallory and two other companions are on a shelf within ten feet of the edge and they must stay the night. They are inside a tent which has a base to the tent. There is an intense storm through the night. Winds are gusting at 70 and 80 miles per hour. They feel the wind at one point begin to pick up the base of the tent, and there is nothing they can do but continue to place their full body weight on that base. Just a little more wind and they would be swept over the side into an abyss that would last for 1000's of feet. Every step on Everest whether thought about or blindly taken can lead to death. That is what this book is all about. You are putting your life on the line for 29,000 feet both up and down the mountain.
Into the Silence is an incredible adventure story for all of us, and readers of all ages. In the end Mallory does not conquer the mountain. England mourns its hero and the hero's death that he embodied. Those that lived while Mallory died do not know how Mallory died. They only know that he died attempting to conquer the summit. They did not know if he made it to the very top or not along with his companion, Sandy Irvine, because they both disappeared high on the North East Ridge. They were sighted less than 1000 feet from the summit before the end.
It took another almost 75 years to begin to unravel the story and learn the truth or as much of the truth as can be learned. An expedition was sponsored to try to find Mallory's remains and with the remains the story of the end. This was 1999. I will not go into that expedition, but they were successful in finding the remains, and most of the mystery. Some still believe Mallory made it to the top, and others have their doubts.
It took 30 additional years after Mallory's last steps before another Brit named Edmund Hillary placed his feet on top of the summit. With him was Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. When asked while on a lecture circuit why are you trying to climb Everest, Mallory responded with the classic, "Because it's there." The real answer is so much more complicated than that and will have you at the edge of your seat for 500 pages. You will not want this book to end, and you will walk away from it, so much richer for the experience. Thank you for reading this review.
Richard Stoyeck
102 of 120 people found the following review helpful.
Into The Silence
By Stephen Balbach
This is a hard book to review because of the mix of good and bad. Davis spent ten years writing and a lifetime reading, the amount of research is epic, it's probably the definitive book on the first three Everest expeditions 1921-24, no small thing considering so many other books. Yet most of the book describes background and logistics with not much time on the mountain by comparison. We learn about the history of the people involved (dozens), history of Tibet, history of WWI, trips to India, trips to Tibet, trips across Tibet, trips back from Tibet. It is highly researched and often boring by its nature since so much happens that is banal. The famous 1924 expedition in which Mallory dies is well told but accounts for only about 50 of 576 pages, or less than 10% of the book. On the other hand there are parts that are really interesting, such as the WWI biographies, and Davis' central theme that the wars silent but ever present influence on the expedition ultimately decided its fate.
The annotated bibliography is equally epic, nearly 50 pages long of recommendations for further reading, it's an impressive Everest Geek-fest, probably the best bibliography of its type and worth owning for alone. I'm not sure who to recommend this book to, certainly anyone who has been to Everest, or with an interest in Himalayan climbing history. If your looking for an introduction to Mallory or a gripping mountain adventure, it may be a long hard climb.
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