By Maurice Isserman

ISBN-10: 0393292525

ISBN-13: 9780393292527

This magesterial and exciting background argues that the tale of yank climbing is the tale of the US itself.

In Continental Divide, Maurice Isserman tells the heritage of yank hiking via 4 centuries of landmark climbs and primary ascents. Mountains have been initially visible as hindrances to civilization; over the years they got here to be seen as areas of redemption and renewal. The White Mountains stirred the transcendentalists; the Rockies and Sierras pulled explorers westward towards happen future; Yosemite encouraged the early environmental conservationists.

Climbing started in North the US as a pursuit for lone eccentrics yet became a mass-participation recreation. starting with Darby box in 1642, the 1st individual to climb a mountain in North the US, Isserman describes the exploration and primary ascents of the most important American mountain levels, from the Appalachians to Alaska. He additionally profiles an important American mountaineers, together with such figures as John C. Frémont, John Muir, Annie Peck, Bradford Washburn, Charlie Houston, and Bob Bates, pertaining to their exploits either at domestic and abroad.

Isserman strains the evolving social, cultural, and political roles mountains performed in shaping the rustic. He describes how American mountaineers solid a "brotherhood of the rope," modeled on America’s precise democratic self-image that characterised mountaineering within the years major as much as and instantly following international conflict II. And he underscores the influence of the postwar "rucksack revolution," together with the advances in strategy and elegance made by way of pioneering "dirtbag" rock climbers.

A extraordinary, deeply researched heritage, Continental Divide tells a narrative of experience and aspiration within the excessive peaks that makes a shiny case for the significance of mountains to American nationwide id.