EIGER DREAMS: Ventures Among Men and Mountains...

EIGER DREAMS: Ventures Among Men and Mountains by Jon Krakauer (Lyons & Burford: $14.95; 186 pp.). Noting that mountain climbing is “a favorite subject for bad movies and spurious metaphors,” journalist Jon Krakauer doesn’t try to explain the singular appeal of this risky sport. He accepts it as a given in his profiles of such prominent mountaineers as John Gill, the inventor of the gymnastic sport of “bouldering.” Even more entertaining are his accounts of personal mishaps, including how he learned to cope with the boredom of being confined to a small tent by storms, and the time a vicious foehn wind carried most of his equipment off the Eiger.