All that changed in the 1800s, writes Fergus Fleming in this highly entertaining chronicle, when travelers under the spell of Enlightenment philosophers and Romantic poets came to the Alps looking for a hint of heaven on earth. Those who, for many reasons, wanted to get a little closer to the deity attempted the first recreational climbs of the mountains. They were an odd lot, indeed. One was Albert Smith, who burdened his porters with wheels of cheese and casks of wine, made his way up Mont Blanc, had a feast, and turned his adventures into a stage play that wowed London audiences throughout the 1850s. Another was the natural scientist John Tyndall, who regarded the Alps as the devil's work but nonetheless raced against his compatriot Edward Whymper to climb the Matterhorn. Still another was William Coolidge, an American-born Oxford don who made Whymper's already unhappy life just a little less pleasant.

Fleming writes winningly of their "conquest" of the mountains--which, of course, has not kept succeeding generations from attempting new routes up the Alps with every climbing season. Mountaineering buffs and armchair travelers alike will enjoy his account. --Gregory McNamee


The soaring mountains of the Alps have inspired and challenged some of the greatest explorers in history. For centuries, however, Europeans shunned the peaks, fearing them to be realms of icy terror, inhospitable regions that harbored dragons, demons, witches, and all sorts of alien beings. Yet their fear eventually turned to curiosity, and in Killing Dragons Fergus Fleming recounts the incredible exploits of the men who explored Europe's frozen wilderness. The adventures began in the late eighteenth century, when French and Swiss scientists tackled the peaks, seeking knowledge of the atmosphere, the earth's origins, and glaciers. In the 1850s, this scientific pursuit became an obsessive competition as British climbers vied with one another to conquer ever higher and more impossible mountains. They fought each other on the peaks and in the press, entertaining a vast public smitten with their bravery, delighted by their personal animosities, and horrified by the disasters that befell them. The great mountains fell one by one to these climbers, while the glaciers accumulated a store of mangled bodies. The conquest of the Alps, a central chapter in the history of mountaineering, is a hair-raising and thrillingly eccentric tale, captured here by a remarkable storyteller.