National Outdoor Book Award for History/Biography
"This wonderful book will be cherished by anyone who ventured into the vertical at some point and should be required reading for all interested in environmental culture."
- Pacific Northwest Quarterly
"Taylor's cultural history of climbing in Yosemite is a highly readable and convincing argument about the cultural construction of climbing. . . . One will not find heroes in this book--just real people with complex and, at times, thorny connections to Western culture."
- Environmental History
"Taylor illuminates important shifts in masculinity (and gender relations more broadly), morality, risk, environmental politics, constructions of nationhood, and consumerism that extend well beyond the rock climbing community to tell us something about . . . society more broadly."
- Journal of Sport History
Taylor "introduces readers to a fascinating group of people, lets them speak for themselves, and critiques them within their larger historical context. . . . To historians he seems to say . . . these guys are part of us; knowing them will help us know ourselves."
- Western Historical Quarterly
Taylor "does for climbing what his earlier book did for salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest. In other words, here is an intricate intellectual and environmental history that helps us understand why particular sub-groups of society do the things they do in nature."
- Pacific Historical Review
"This wonderful book will be cherished by anyone who ventured into the vertical at some point and should be required reading for all interested in environmental culture."
- Pacific Northwest Quarterly
"Taylor's cultural history of climbing in Yosemite is a highly readable and convincing argument about the cultural construction of climbing. . . . One will not find heroes in this book--just real people with complex and, at times, thorny connections to Western culture."
- Environmental History
"Taylor illuminates important shifts in masculinity (and gender relations more broadly), morality, risk, environmental politics, constructions of nationhood, and consumerism that extend well beyond the rock climbing community to tell us something about . . . society more broadly."
- Journal of Sport History
Taylor "introduces readers to a fascinating group of people, lets them speak for themselves, and critiques them within their larger historical context. . . . To historians he seems to say . . . these guys are part of us; knowing them will help us know ourselves."
- Western Historical Quarterly
Taylor "does for climbing what his earlier book did for salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest. In other words, here is an intricate intellectual and environmental history that helps us understand why particular sub-groups of society do the things they do in nature."
- Pacific Historical Review
