Sublime

An American, Woodrow Wilson Sayre, and three companions, none of whom were experienced climbers, crossed secretly into Tibet from Nepal in 1962 to make an unauthorized attempt on Everest from the north. An intense personal drive combined with a sequence of incredibly lucky circumstances that all but surpasses belief permitted Sayre to reach 25,000

“Everyone knows about Machu Picchu and, less so of course, places like Espiritu Pampa and Choquequirao. That’s because Bingham wrote about those things in his books. But he went to dozens of places, some that almost no one else has gone to since. He was dealing with corruption, thievery, people of dubious character—and he was under a lot of

Two hundred thousand US soldiers fought in the Philippines, suffering seven thousand casualties (3.5 percent). Twenty percent of the Philippine population died, mostly civilians, as a result of the US Army’s scorched-earth strategy

“A ticket to sure fire danger and excitement in the most explosive form is furnished every man who volunteers for the Seabee demolition units,” said a military publication in October 1943. When it is over “he is an expert in destruction, qualified to blow up everything from a milk bottle to a man.” So qualified, each graduate was assigned to a

Manila wasn’t short on symbols. The sixth-largest city in the United States—substantially larger than Boston or Washington, D.C.—had for a month of fighting been converted into an abattoir. South Manila, where Quirino lived, had been leveled. Bodies decomposed everywhere, many bearing the marks of torture or execution. The stench was unbearable.

Bimini, part of the Bahamas, is just fifty miles east of Miami. In the nineteenth century, it was a way station for fugitives from the powerful, a home for pirates, a wrecking spot. Later it was known for alcohol smuggling and as the playground of that quintessential figure of American masculinist national literature: Ernest Hemingway. In fact, in

Late in the month Mugs Stump crossed paths with Waterman on the upper Ruth Glacier. Stump, an alpinist of world renown who died on Denali in 1992, had just completed a difficult new route on a nearby peak, the Mooses Tooth.