A Day to Die For - 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - The Untold True Story by Graham Ratcliffe

This is both a book about mountaineering and investigative writing.   In part it deals with Graham Ratcliffe's alpine climbing, but it generally does so to show how it related to the events of May 1996 when  a number of climbers died on Mount Everest.  He doesn't go into too much detail about his climbs which is good from my perspective.   Graham was high on the mountain when the tragedy arose and was left wondering what would have happened if his team new had been called upon to help with the rescue.     
Eventually, but after several years had elapsed, the event came to so haunt him that he spent many years of his life as he painstakingly tried to establish if weather predictions were known by the leaders of the mountaineering teams and, if so, why did they ignore these dire predictions.    Serious questions are also raised about the avoidance of these matters by people who wrote books about the tragedy, especially Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air) and David Breashears (High Exposure).

 

Rating  3/5

The Great Disruption : How the Climate Crisis Will Transform the Global Economy by Paul Gilding

An interesting book that held my interest. Paul Gilding describes the problems of the finite resources that we are using at a rate that means they can not last based on the scientific and mathematical  evidence; facts that many people readily agree with.   His conclusion is that we won't change until the economic consequences of this starts to come into play.  He is confident that we will act and act very quickly when things become dire; virtually on a war footing.   I would have liked to have had more of his views as to how some of the problems, such as population and water shortages caused by global warming, might pan out.  A book well worth reading.

Rating 4/5

1835 : The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia James Boyce

In many ways this book is companion of James Boyce's book Van Diemens Land.  It deals with the absolute arrogance and greed for land by the invading first settlers of south east mainland Australia, in what is now Victoria.  The aboriginal people were duped and mislead into believing they would not be displaced from their land, but of course the opposite was exactly what happened and did so with the connivance of the governors of Van Diemens Land and New South Wales.   It is hard not to feel very grieved for the appalling treatment of the local aboriginal communities.

First Post

Only just decided to create this blog after seeing a poll in GoodReads