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Into Thin Air

I read this book years ago.  It was published in 1997, one year after a disastrous Mount Everest expedition during which a total of 12 climbers perished.

I chose this book for my bookgroup which meets at the end of April.  

It's not a happy story, but it's incredibly well written and it left me scratching my head about why someone would pay $65,000 (in 1996~~who knows how much a climber would have to pay today?) to climb the highest mountain in the world knowing that at any given moment they could perish, be seriously injured, not make it to the top, or be one of the few who beat the odds and stand for a mere 2-3 minutes at the top after the brutal trek to 29,000 + feet.