Amazon.com
David Breashears has climbed Mt. Everest four times. For this, he is known as a world-class mountaineer. A lengthy career in documentary filmmaking--including the Imax film, Everest--has earned him wide acclaim and four Emmy awards. For this, he is known as one of the elite cinematographers in his field. But his new autobiography, High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Other High Places, proves he is more than a climber and a filmmaker; he is also an able writer.
Breashears has no lack of good material. We follow him through the stunning backdrops of Yosemite, Europe, Nepal, and Tibet, brushing up against triumphs and tragedies along the way. And while the nuts and bolts of his adventures are entertainment enough, his knack for building suspense and employing understated drama makes his autobiography read like a novel: "The morning was sunny and calm, and Rob looked as though he'd lain down on his side and fallen asleep. Around him the undisturbed snow sparkled in the sun. I stared at his bare left hand ... I wondered what a mountaineer with Rob's experience was doing without a glove."
Breashears also likes to remind his audience of humble beginnings surmounted: his early climbing days when he was known as "the kid," and a winter he spent sleeping under a sheet of plywood during the Wyoming oil boom when he was called "the worm." But mostly he documents his filmmaking career and climbing passion, both of which he approaches with an obsessive fervor. Readers interested in either pursuit will find High Exposure a fascinating traverse across the spine of the world. --Ben Tiffany
From Publishers Weekly
Possibly the most interesting aspect of this book is how improbable it seems that Breashears (Mountain Without Mercy) ever lived to write it. An accomplished alpinist, Breashears not only recounts his numerous, dicey ascents of the planets peaks but also explores his motivation for doing so. Though he is an experienced cinematographer whose past employers range from PBS to Hollywood, Breashears is most widely known as the director of the IMAX film Everest. While filming the movie, Breashears and his crew were fortunate to avoid the unforgiving storm at the mountains summit that led to the death of eight people and was chronicled in Jon Krakauers Into Thin Air. Breashears uses that tragic season on Everest as a frame for a personal memoir. The focus is on how he stepped out of the shadow of his violent military father and discovered his passions for climbing and filmmaking. Some of his psychology is simplistic, but there is no doubt that Breashears is as serious about understanding his actions as he is about succeeding in them. And there is no shortage of action, whether he is scaling a 1000-foot vertical rock or narrowly escaping being swept off a cliff by a runaway tonnage of snow. Though at times the book is self-aggrandizing, a little ego can be tolerated in this largely engrossing work, and is, perhaps, only to be expected from someone who has four times scrabbled up the ice and rocks of Everest to reach the top of the world. 16 pages full-color photos not seen by PW. Major ad/promo; appearances on Larry King Live and Today; first serial to Mens Journal. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
YA-A world-class rock climber and a professional cinematographer, Breashears is renowned for having organized and led the Imax filming expedition to the summit of Mt. Everest in May 1996. In this autobiography, he describes himself as the third son of a controlling and abusive army major who broke up his family when David was 10-years-old. He was ambivalent about schoolwork and spent all his free time rock climbing in the Rocky Mountain foothills. After completing high school, he honed his skills and tackled difficult rock faces. A British writer and rock climber hired him as a gofer on a documentary filming expedition in Yosemite. With this serendipitous introduction to filmmaking, Breashears was fascinated by the combined art and science of photography. He had already climbed Everest twice when he was hired to put together a team to film the climb of the world's highest mountain with the world's largest camera. His vivid and poignant observations on the fatal expedition in which 12 climbers died complement Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air (Villard, 1997). Teens will appreciate Breashears's honesty in his personal reflections, and will be thrilled with the exciting stories of rock climbing and danger at the roof of the world.Penny Stevens, Centreville Regional Library, Fairfax, VA Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Times Bks. 1999. c.240p. permanent paper. photogs. maps. ISBN 0-8129-3159-9. $23. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Bruce Barcott
Breashears knows how to convey the passion of mountaineering on film, but on the page he rarely pauses to savor the details or tease out the drama...
From Booklist
Second to the obsession to top Mount Everest is the fixation on reading about it, and Breashears has succumbed to both temptations. The mountain's literature inspired him in boyhood; in adulthood, he is celebrated for his filmmaking, particularly his spectacular Everest IMAX movie released in 1998. Breashears' account of its production against the grim background of the 1996 climbing catastrophe brackets this memoir of other feats of his climbing and working life. Breashears wryly relates his roughnecking period on Wyoming oil wells, which apart from its tough amusement, shows him following the Algerian credo that the trip to the top starts at the bottom. He carried that precept to mountain filmmaking, talking his way into the job of cameraman's assistant for a team filming on Yosemite's El Capitan. His developing camera's eye was grounded in rock-climbing skills honed in the hang-loose scene in 1970s Colorado, whose dedication to an ineffable, ethical purity in mountain climbing he managed to practice between film projects. A poignant instance is his and a friend's ascent up a mile-high face of Kwangde, "my finest alpine experience in the Himalayas." Then came the IMAX project, the deaths and rescue dramatized in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air (1997), Breashears' team's resumption of their summit attempt, and the subsequent ascent past frozen-solid corpses. Whatever mystery seduces climbers to risk all on Everest continues to vicariously inveigle readers--and there will be the publisher's full-service publicity campaign to remind them of their obsession. Gilbert Taylor
Review
Bruce Barcot The New York Times Book Review The greatest pleasures in High Exposure come when [Breashears] invites his readers in to the clannish subculture [of climbing].
Book Description
For generations of resolute adventurers, from George Mallory to Sir Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay to Jon Krakauer, Mount Everest and the world's greatest peaks have provided the ultimate testing ground. As the world's fascination with mountaineering reaches a fever pitch, the question remains: Why climb? In High Exposure, elite mountaineer and acclaimed filmmaker David Breashears answers with an intimate and captivating look at his life. Breashears's passion for climbing began on the cliffs of Boulder, Colorado -- and nearly ended on the south side of Everest in 1996.From childhood, Breashears felt irresistibly drawn to the Himalayas' promise of adventure and unforgiving demands on body, mind, and soul. Readers learn of his turbulent early years and his training on the rock before he was dubbed the Kloberdanz Kid. While most American teens were reveling in the recklessness of the seventies, Breashears indulged in a potent mixture of discipline, passion, and drive to pioneer the improbable Perilous Journey in Colorado, ascend Half Dome in Yosemite, and attempt Everest's unclimbed Kangshung Face in Tibet. Along the way, the intense young man apprenticed on film shoots and gradually took to the camera himself, relishing its physical and artistic demands. He was soon consumed with capturing on film the unsurpassed beauty and profound human experience he witnessed as a climber. That he would someday film at the top of the world with a forty-two-pound camera during the Everest IMAX Filming Expedition surprised no one who knew him: He was always looking to the next challenge, his eyes on the highest horizons.For David Breashears, climbing has never been a question of bravery: Rather, it is the pursuit of excellence and a quest for self-knowledge. Danger comes, he argues, when ambition blinds reason. The stories this world-class climber and great adventurer tells will surprise you. From discussions of egotism and competitiveness on the heights -- despite the brotherhood of the rope -- to a frank description of mistakes made during the 1996 Everest tragedy, this personal history goes beyond Mallory's famous quip "Because it's there" to find meaning and hope at the top of the world.
Home
