In his new book, Fallen Giants, coauthor and Professor of History Stewart Weaver chronicles the history of Himalayan mountaineering, from the first expedition in 1892 to the Mt. Everest disaster in 1996 when eight climbers died. Among the highlights is the 1921 Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition, a pioneer group that included famed British climber George Mallory.

The “fallen giants” in the title of Stewart Weaver and Maurice Isserman’s new history of Himalayan mountaineering come in two forms.

There are the oversized mountains themselves, the world’s highest. For 1,500 miles these forbidding peaks rise to more than 8,000 meters above sea level, reaching halfway to the Earth’s stratosphere. Their snow-covered glaciers, treacherous crevasses, and vertical rock faces have inspired such awe that the Himalaya—Sanskrit for “abode of snow”— was for centuries also venerated as the abode of the gods. The ascent of one of these erstwhile mystical summits, Weaver and Isserman write, marks not only an impressive human achievement but, in the words of the great British climber Bill Tilman, “the fall of one of the giants.”

There are also the men and women, like Tilman and his climbing partner Eric Shipton. These early mountaineers often formed longtime friendships and risked their lives for one another on the slopes.

Since the 1990s, report Weaver and Isserman, that “brotherhood of the rope” has been eclipsed by a drive for individual glory and “self-seeking commercialism.” Today, the majority of Himalayan climbers are relatively inexperienced adventurers, equipped with oxygen tanks and guided up the high-altitude slopes by paid professionals.

This evolution in the culture of expeditions, coupled with shifting world politics, frame this first comprehensive history of Himalayan mountaineering written by professional historians. Weaver, a professor of history at the University, draws on his knowledge of the British imperial era to set the early Himalayan expeditions into their historical context. Isserman, who received his Ph.D. in history from the University in 1979 and is a professor at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, focuses on the period from the Second World War to the present.

“One of the things that the book does is show how the earliest mountaineering in the region was quite unlike what we see today,” Weaver explains. “For one thing, it was bound up in government sponsored efforts to map, survey, and control the northern frontier of the British Indian Empire.”

During the 1920s and 1930s, the competition to be the first to reach a great Himalayan summit assumed a national-political dimension, much like the Olympics, with countries taking great national pride in their teams’ victories. In 1934, for example, Nazi officials, including Adolf Hitler, supported a disastrous German attempt to climb Nanga Parbat, the world’s ninth-highest mountain. During the Cold War, Himalayan mountaineering was driven by the desire to keep pace with the Chinese and the Russians. “The same motives that put a man on the moon in 1969 lay in part behind the 1963 American expedition to Mount Everest,” says Weaver.

Along with context, the authors provide intimate portraits of prominent climbers, drawing whenever possible from personal correspondence. Their own words show these individuals to be very much products of their time, at times espousing unabashed elitist and imperialist views toward other climbers and the native Sherpa, who often carried the hundreds of loads of supplies needed to outfit huge expeditions. By contrast, other mountaineers struggled privately and publically with the ethics of their profession. As American Rick Ridgeway wrote in 1976, “[T]hough none of us would admit it, we knew we were paying others to risk their lives for us.”

Both avid climbers, Weaver and Isserman bring to their book an insider’s appreciation of the sport, although neither has climbed to anywhere near 8,000 meters. Weaver was first beguiled by the Himalayas during the summers he spent in the Indian foothills with his family. He would wake up each morning to views of “the snows,” the ice-covered peaks on the northern horizon, and dream of exploring and climbing them. Now, four decades later, this self-described “armchair Himalayan mountaineer” has vicariously gotten his wish.