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Outside Magazine, November 2009

Books and Media
The 10 Greatest Adventure Biographies
Clear some space on the bookshelf.

By Bruce Barcott

George Mallory | Ernest Shackleton | Henry Morton Stanley | Randy Morgenson | Tenzing Norgay | Donald Crowhurst | Chris McCandless | Marco Polo | Bruce Chatwin | John Wesley Powell

Mountaineers Books
Courtesy of Mountaineers Books

The Wildest Dream: The Biography of George Mallory, by Peter & Leni Gillman (2000)
No. 10
George Mallory was so much more than bleached bones and a brief entry in Bartlett's ("Because it is there"). Handsome and charismatic, he romped around Cambridge with the chic Bloomsbury set before finding his life's calling on rope in the Alps—and his early end on Everest in 1924. The Gillmans boldly go where few Mallory biographers dare tread, including into the sensitive issue of a rumored early homosexual experience, the authenticity of the Quote—he likely said something more like "Because we are mountaineers"—and odd examples of his adventurous
Book Smackdown: Adventure Bios
Tell us your choice for the best adventure biography of all time in our book smackdown.
spirit. For instance, he enjoyed fording Himalayan rivers in the nude.



Next Page: No. 9

George Mallory | Ernest Shackleton | Henry Morton Stanley | Randy Morgenson | Tenzing Norgay | Donald Crowhurst | Chris McCandless | Marco Polo | Bruce Chatwin | John Wesley Powell



Contributing editor BRUCE BARCOTT co-moderated the debate between Christine Todd Whitman and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the November 2004 issue.

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