Hardwear Sessions

The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes

Math and science were never my strong points, so reading this book gave me a deep appreciation for the genius of people like Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi and Robert Oppenheimer. Richard Rhodes does an excellent job of explaining the challenges that went into building the bomb, as well as the political atmosphere at the time which made it possible. This book is the ultimate example of the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" because you can't help but cheer each success along the way, yet be horrified at the end result, as many of the contributing scientist were. A big, thick book which will last for a good length expedition, including delayed flights both coming and going.

Longitude - Dava Sobel

With the advent of GPS units it is easy to take modern day navigation for granted, but it wasn't always like that. Figuring out your latitude (north/south location) was easy, but determining where you were east/west (longitude) was a far trickier problem. The prize for figuring this out first was not safer voyages, but also being able to stake out new territories and have naval supremacy. This is a great book and a fast read - perfect for a single storm bound offering.

Alex Baires, Mountain Hardwear Product Design Team

A Walk in the Woods--Bill Bryson

Prepare to laugh out loud as the author recounts his attempt to hike the entire Appalachian Trail (AT) with old friend Katz who provides much of the entertainment. Bryson's writing style is humorous and makes you want to keep reading while educating you about the AT at the same time.

Touching the Void - Joe Simpson

Classic book about a miraculous story of survival and friendship in the dangerous but amazing world of alpine climbing. You will be amazed by what the human body can survive (part courage, part determination, part luck)... made into documentary/reenactment somewhat recently.

Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer

Story of a young man (Chris McCandless) who is searching for a greater meaning and who refuses to give into societal pressures and expectations. Unfortunately for him, luck does not go his way but the author does a great job of retracing Chris's steps while trying to analyze what Chris was trying to do and letting the reader come to his/her own conclusion (if one dares to try). Recently made into a movie directed by Sean Penn.

My First Summer in the Sierra - John Muir

Eloquently written book by one of the most influential outdoorsmen in history about his first summer journey through the Sierra Nevada.

Cynthia Houng, Mountain Hardwear Marketing Department

After Nature - W.G. Sebald

A strange, haunting cycle of poems, full of melancholy and loss. I read Sebald in the Dolomites, as wild thunderstorms swept through the Sella pass and the skies turned pitch-black. Through three enigmatic figures (the early modern painter Matthias Grunewald, the botanist and explorer Georg Stellar, and Sebald himself), Sebald takes us through the crossroads of history. Sebald's language, like his images, are crystalline. There's German Romanticism here, but there's also something darker, more sinister. As I write, it occurs to me that Sebald's writing appeals to me in part because it mirrors, in some strange way, the experience of being in the mountains. The utter solitude, the sense of being alone in a landscape, with time passing all around, and the way the altitude throws everything into crisp relief. The world sharpens and hardens, and moves away.

Woman on the Rocks: The Mountaineering Letters of Ruth Dyar Mendenhall - Edited by Valerie Mendenhall Cohen.

For several summers in graduate school, I lived out of a car on the East Side of the Sierras. Being cheap, I refused to pay for a campsite and pitched my sad little A-frame tent in the pumice dust, in an area frequented by dirt bikers and ATV enthusiasts. You would have called my "summer home" a wide spot in the road, and nothing was ever clean. We hiked a lot in the backcountry, climbed a bit, bouldered a lot, and in the evenings read books until the light died. One summer, tired of everything in the car, we headed into Mammoth to pick out new reading material. We came across this collection of Ruth Mendenhall's letters at the Booky Joint. If you climb a lot in the Sierras, you'll recognize the Mendenhall name, as Ruth and her husband, John Mendenhall, climbed all over these mountains. In these letters, Ruth describes her entry into mountaineering, her love for alpinism, and her experiences as a "woman climber." In these letters, Ruth is alternately humorous, tender, bratty, and lyrical. There's a photograph, somewhere in the very first pages, of Ruth in 1937, dressed in a stylish little suit, holding a pair of skis. That photograph, and Ruth's insistence on wearing pearls and lipstick to communal dinners at the ski lodge, marked the vast chasm between her culture and mine. Yet other parts of the book, like Ruth's exhilaration in free movement, her love of open spaces and rare plants, are reminders that certain elements of mountaineering have not changed much over the past century.