Last Climb: The Legendary Everest Expedition of George Mallory

Completing the trio of new books on George Mallory (see Ghosts of Everest and Lost on Everest, above), this breathtakingly illustrated volume unfolds as a vivid, engaging pictorial documentary, offering an incredible armchair adventure on the roof of the world. Spectacular color and black-and-white photographs from Mallory's expeditions and from the 1999 search distinguish this volume, capturing the grandeur and almost unearthly beauty of the Himalayan heights. When Mallory and Andrew Irvine vanished at the top of the world in 1924, team member Noel Odell, the last person to see the two men alive, reported that they were ascending the Second Step, an escarpment just 800 feet from the summit. Odell later suggested that the duo might have been on the much lower First Step, and historians have debated the question ever since. IMAX filmmaker and Everest veteran Breashears (High Exposure, Forecasts, Apr. 26) and mountaineering historian Salkeld (Climbing Mount Everest, etc.) believe it's unlikely that Mallory and Irvine reached the Second Step and concur with the authors of the other two books that the question of whether the duo reached the summit remains unresolved. The spectacular photographs are accompanied by a perceptive probe of Mallory the man, an Edwardian idealist who threw off the shackles of Victorian restraint yet remained torn between fatherly duty (he left his wife and three children for long periods) and his sense of mission as ""a child of Empire... conscious of what England expected."" Included also are a poignant introduction by John Mallory, the explorer's son, who pays tribute to the father he hardly knew, as well as a brief essay by George Mallory II (John's son), who reached Everest's summit in 1995, symbolically completing his grandfather's quest. BOMC selection. (Oct.)