The Boys of Everest: Chris Bonington and the Tragedy of Climbing's Greatest Generation is a story of tremendous courage, staggering achievement, and heart-breaking loss. Bonington’s inner circle—they came to be known as Bonington’s Boys—included a dozen of mountaineering’s legendary figures and gave birth to a new brand of climbing. They took increasingly grave risks on expeditions to the world’s most difficult peaks. And they paid an enormous price for their achievements. Most of them died in the mountains, leaving behind the hardest question of all: Was it worth it?

The Boys of Everest, based on extensive interviews with surviving climbers and other individuals as well as five decades of journals, films, photographs, expedition accounts, and letters, provides the closest thing to an answer that we’ll ever have. It offers riveting descriptions of what Bonington and his comrades found in the mountains—as well as an understanding of what they lost there. 

read chapter 1 of The Boys of Everest