Left for Dead (Movie Tie-in Edition): My Journey Home from Everest

Beck Weathers's story - told with fearless honesty- really resonated with me. I'd already read three other accounts of the events on Everest in 1996 - *Into Thin Air* (written from the perspective of a professional writer), *The Climb* (written from the perspective of a professional guide), and *After the Wind* (written from the perspective of a mountaineering client). They were all well-written, and enlightening reads.But I think of all the books I've read about the tragedies on Mount Everest in 1996, *Left for Dead* is the one that most touched me. It's the first one that dared to talk about what happens AFTER a mountaineering expedition - after the mountain climbers pack up, clear out, head back down the mountain, and fly back into the bosom of their families. For me, this was important terrain.The last biggish mountain I climbed was Mount Adams. I climbed it during the summer I turned forty-one. At some point in the climb I looked down the slope and the faces of my two young sons - aged three and five - flashed into my thoughts, and it occurred to me that if something happened to me up there, they'd be motherless. When I'd climbed Rainier, Baker, and Hood, I hadn't been a mother. My life had been my own. Now I belonged to two young people. It changed things. My dad, who had been a member of several mountaineering expeditions in his younger days (K2, Mount Saint Elias, Mount Kennedy) and who had been my guide up Rainier, Baker, and Hood, was 79 now, and at about 10,000' decided that was as far as he would go on this climb. So, not only was Mount Adams the last biggish mountain I climbed, it was the first biggish mountain I ever climbed without Dad leading the way.Reading *Left for Dad* brought back a flood of memories of my climbing adventures with Dad, and it reminded me, too, of that moment when my sons' faces had flashed before my eyes on Mount Adams.Weathers has a wonderful sense of humor - he knows how to laugh at himself and his circumstances, and I found myself laughing along with him. He's also not afraid to be honest about his own short-comings, flaws, and foibles. He makes mistakes and owns them. And at the end of his book Beck Weathers finds a beautiful redemption for them.This book was a thoroughly-satisfying read.

For the most part I concur with many other reviews of this book. If you have read Into Thin Air by Krakauer then you may find some enjoyment in this book. The first 25% adds perspective to Beck's experience. I enjoyed this. the last 15% talks about build up to the climb. In between it is an ego centric rambling in which I tried to manufacture some interest waiting a bit for the sub story to go somewhere worthwhile. It is a long hard climb I should say. Sad that someone did not give this nut some good book writing advice. I paid 1.99 cents which is about right. 40% good and 60% terrible.

In addition to this book, I am concurrently reading Into Thin Air by Krakauer, and one thing that surprised me was that the prose of Beck Weathers's book seems at least as good as Krakauer's. Some of his descriptions, as when he describes Everest’s Khumbu Icefall, struck me as being even better. The more intimate passages, discussing his physical and mental state, are similarly vivid. Of course, this was written with Stephen Michaud, but the voice and tone -- when Beck and not the other people in his life are commenting -- is so full of character that this is certainly not a project farmed out extensively to someone else. This is Beck's tale, even as it is also his wife's, children's, and to a certain extent, friends' tale. Does it get a bit too granular in the autobiographical stretches, at times? Perhaps: that's a matter of taste. But the outstanding fact is that B. W. is someone I feel I would be happy to know. In fact, I came to this book (and Krakauer's) in the first place because I'd seen the 2015 docudrama, Everest, and the Beck character impressed me as the best of the bunch.Many reviewers remark on how 'flawed' Weathers is. He certainly, in manly fashion, fesses up to having let himself and his family down by allowing outside pursuits to dominate his time (not always mountaineering, but other risky sports through the years as well). Yet what stands out for me is Beck's charisma, and when a friend comments near the end of the book that Beck has a 'great heart', I agree with that on the evidence. There are millions of men (and very many women) that give themselves over to thrill-seeking and materialism in an effort to divert their attention from the spiritual-emotional-intellectual hole at the center of their lives. Then again, many of them are shallow instead of seriously depressed. Beck should be given credit for at least or even heroically attempting to grasp life -- in the ways that he could at the time -- rather than put his head in the oven, like Sylvia Plath, or hang himself, like L'Wren Scott. But Beck seems always to have been a fundamentally good soul and a thoroughly if not perfectly good-natured man. That's an achievement all by itself. The fact is, in the end he shed his depression and found a whole new outlook on life. If Beck is flawed, what does that say about the rest of us? He was never a philosopher, and has suffered all his life till recently because of that. But something in his ordinary life was not good for him, was suffocating him, and made him what we call ‘depressed’. And that very depression points to the fact that his soul was hungering for something more than the material professional success his parents wanted for him.Beck Weathers wasn’t flawed because he wanted a kind of highness (ironic, as he’s afraid of heights) and refused to be satisfied with the ordinary. He wouldn’t have been happy if he’d tried harder to embrace it. To the contrary, the kind of 'ordinary' that had been given to him was killing him from the inside out. In his confused groping way, he had to reject the ordinary to grab at what really felt like living -- beyond mundane constraints, shallow standards, and invalid judgements. His real problem was that he rejected these ordinary standards of success incompletely. He was still concerned with status, with rating himself. This is why Everest is so meaningful, and this is why its painful repercussions had a kind of emotional logic. It was the near loss of his life on Everest that got him to complete the project of rejecting the definition of 'success' that had done so much to hurt him. This is the lesson of the book: on the one hand, Everest nearly got him killed and was apparently disastrous and foolhardy. On the other hand, and more importantly, the man survived and even thrived after the crisis had passed. What Everest really killed off was his attachment to an illusion. To the extent that most of us still believe in that illusion and live with it every day, Beck Weathers is well ahead. Wiser than most -- and funnier -- is my judgement of him. At the end of this greatly touching and compelling book I had rather an emotional moment, and narrowly avoided shedding tears.

I really wanted to love this book, however it was a let down. The beginning is interesting and tells the story of Beck's near death experience in a compelling way. But then the book shifts and it turns into a scattered almost journal - like format with references the average reader (myself included) has no clue about and far too many uninteresting details about Beck's earlier life. I get that this is essentially an autobiography for Beck, but it didn't work. The worse part was the frequent comments inserted into the book from Beck's wife, kids, and friends and it was so disjointed, i ended up skipping ahead for much of the middle part. Unfortunately, it pretty much continues for the rest of the book. There was a lot of Beck bashing in this book too, which surprised me. I get that Beck was not *there* for his family and quite selfish at times, but it was discussed over and over to the point where it needed to stop already.I did enjoy the parts of Beck's climbing journey leading up to Everest. If there had been more of that and less of the disjointed family stuff, it would have been a much better read.Definitely not worth the $14 I paid for this book. Save your money and borrow it from the library or wait until it's on sale.

Book arrived in good condition and before expected.You would be forgiven for thinking that the notoriety Beck Weather's had received had fed his ego enough to believe that us readers actually wanted to read about every step of his life from birth up until his tragic experience on Everest.But as you get to the last third of this book, you realise that it's all been said for good reason.The change and awakening Beck went through on and after his near death is a result of all, previously talked about in the book.As I got to the end it all clicked into place. His own upbringing, relationships with his parents and brothers, how his brother in law had non judgmentally stepped in for him with his wife and children when he could not step up himself. This book is about his ordeal on Everest, but its so much more. Its also about depression, courage, honour, and most of all, love. How people cope with life in adversity in different ways.The parts that I 'thought' were boring me in the first chapters are what brought me to tears towards the end. You realise that to truly appreciate what this family have gone through, you have to know what occurred in the years previous.Contrary to what I thought, it's not all about Beck, it's how it affected everyone else and its also a tribute to Howie, which was such a touching and deserving tribute to a wonderful human being.There are times in our lives when, while others shine, some are content to hold the Fort discreetly and ask no reward. It was Howies death that brought me to tears.The end of the book left me thinking the opposite of what I had thought at the start, Beck is a very selfless man and despite what he went through as a climber, he hails Howie the hero in this book for being a father figure to his children when he was off climbing mountains. It left me feeling really sad for what he has missed.He doesn't just tell you how Everest changed him, he shows you.I enjoyed this book, yes I recommend 👌( sorry to waffle on with such a long review but I wanted to explain to prevent readers getting so far and putting it down, give it a chance, it's worth it )

I read this cold no reviews and it was not the man v mountain I expected. That was disappointing as I was keen to hear his take on the way his fellows reacted good and bad. It is to his credit he did not choose cheap shots at potentially easy targets but as someone who can't understand the concept of risking death to summit I did miss hearing about his take on what his fellows did and why. I did still enjoy the book. I suspect it reveals more about both than certainlyvweathers may think.The generosity and forgiveness of his loved ones suggest even before Everest he was a far more compassionate and good man than he describes. If you are a mountain mad reader maybe not for you. If people and what it is to be human interests you then it is a truly rewarding book, oddly, since it is erratically styled and idiosyncratic in execution!

Ordered this book for roughly £10. What arrived was basically a well bound pamphlet, 14 pages long and it stops mid sentence at the end of the 14th page! Very, very weird and certainly not value for money. Perhaps just a one off mistake? I will return for a refund.

Great book but it's important to note that this is not fully about the Everest tragedy (only a couple of chapters). This book is mainly about his personal life, struggles with depression, marriage and what led him to become an mountaineer (with fun stories about his previous expeditions). There is also a good deal about his recovery journey which I found quite interesting. Overall it was a very engaging read! If you are looking for a fully detailed book on the Everest tragedy, go for Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. However, I would still highly recommend this book.

I'm in awe of the awful conditions a person will endure to achieve a goal - and Everest is as tough as they come. But this book also illustrates the collateral damage incurred along the way: the families and loved ones who get on with life at home (the mundane but necessary stuff), and wait patiently whilst the thrill-seeker pursues a dream, sometimes with insane risks.This book illustrates that there are two sides to a heroic adventure tale - and the real heroes are often unsung. An interesting look at both sides.