Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 368 pages
- Published by: Hyperion February 5, 2008
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 1401302734
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-1401302733
-
Book Dimensions:
9.3 x 6 x 1.3 inches
- Weighs: 1.4 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Journalist Kodas has written a disturbing account of stupidity and greed on the slopes of Mount Everest. On assignment for the
Hartford Courant in 2004, Kodas joined an expedition led by a couple who had summited the mountain more than a dozen times between them. As he moved up Everest, Kodas watched his expedition disintegrate in a mess of recriminations, thefts, lies and violence. At the same time, a sociopathic guide was leading a 69-year-old doctor to his death on the unforgiving slopes. The twin disasters led Kodas to delve into the commercialization of Mount Everest, and to discover that such experiences were becoming a depressing norm. A thorough reporter, Kodas does an great job exposing the ways in which money and ego have corrupted the traditional cultures of both mountaineers and their Sherpa guides. He also brings a painful focus to the delusions, misunderstandings and indifference that allow climbers to literally step over the bodies of dying people on their way to the top. Oddly enough, Kodas writes less ably about himself, and the reasons for his own expedition's collapse remain unclear; the sequencing of story lines is confusing as well. Nevertheless, his narrative is as hard to turn away from as a slow-motion train wreck.
(Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Ben Mezrich, New York Times bestselling author of Bringing Down the House and Rigged
"
High Crimes is both fascinating and terrifying. As someone who shies away from climbing stairs, let alone mountains, I was completely blown away by the high-stakes drama and intrigue of this Everest story. Kodas's vivid writing kept me up for two straight nights, and my heart is still racing! The story is tragic, yet somehow also uplifting--a true masterpiece!"
Reader Reviews
High Crimes tells two narratives: (1) journalist Michael Kodas's Everest summit journey and (2) a separate, concurrent summit bid in which an elderly climber was led to this death by a sociopathic, inexperienced, freeloading guide. Kodas combines these two experiences to make his case that Everest is a modern day cesspit of greed, crime, and man-made disaster waiting to happen at every turn. Kodas makes many valid claims about the conditions on Everest. Sickness isn't always caused by nature - now fistfights and STDs are prime reasons for visits to the medical tent. Climbers are pushing themselves with performance enhancing drugs, or cutting costs and equipment to the minimum and assuming other climbers will bail them out in a pinch. Theft is rampant, and unscrupulous businessmen sell unfit oxygen tanks, putting climbers in peril when they gamble their life on their tank in a final summit bid. In Kodas's own experience, he ran across teammates willing to steal or lie to get ahead as well as a cheapskate guide who shirked responsibility and sponged off others. The weakest parts of the book arise in Kodas's descriptions of his own adventure, however. He airs a laundry list of gripes about every trifle of a disagreement on the team. The team engaged in back-and-forth spats via their blogs, and Kodas was clearly hurt that "their side" got published first, or more believably, in his opinion. He uses his book to set the record straight on every single detail, bogging down an otherwise gripping multi-faceted adventure story. High Crimes is worth it for the story of Dr. Nils Antazana alone. Antazana, a skilled but older climber, fell prey to a con man of a "guide" who abandoned the doctor for dead and used his money and equipment for a personal summit bid. The story, which is told piecemeal throughout the entire text of High Crimes, reinforces the lawless frontier picture Kodas paints of the Everest base camp and man-eat-man world of the slopes.
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