Trieste, années 1930 : un homme redéfinit l’escalade. Emilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites retrace le destin fulgurant du pionnier italien, inventeur de la direttissima et auteur de plus de 200 premières ascensions.

Shortlisted for the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature Shortlisted for the 2019 Boardman Tasker Award An intriguing biography of the renowned Austrian alpinist Paul Preuss, who achieved international recognition both for his remarkable solo ascents and for his advocacy of an ethically "pure" alpinism (meaning without any artificial aids). In the months before his death in 1913, from falling more than 300 metres during an attempt to make the first free solo ascent of the North Ridge of the Mandlkogel, Paul Preuss's public presentations on his climbing adventures filled concert halls in Austria, Italy, and Germany. George Mallory, the famed English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s, is quoted as saying "no one will ever equal Preuss." Reinhold Messner, the first climber to ascend all fourteen 8000 metre peaks, was so impressed by the young Austrian's achievements that he built a mountaineering museum around Preuss's piton hammer, wrote two books (in German) about him and instituted a foundation in Preuss's name. Although he died at only 27 years old, modern climbing may never have developed the ethical, existential core that it has today if not for Preuss's bold style. Even the most trenchant traditionalists remain unsure about whether to add him to their pantheon or dismiss him as at worst a lunatic or at best an indelicate subject better left ignored.

David Smart traces the life of Italian poet and climber Antonia Pozzi, whose writing was shaped by the Dolomites and the pressures of fascist Italy.Born in 1912, Pozzi came of age during a period of political repression and restrictive expectations for women. She found a measure of freedom in climbing and in writing, developing a body of poetry closely connected to mountain landscapes even as her work was constrained by the world around her.Among the Pale Spires places Pozzi within the climbing culture and literary history of interwar Italy. Smart follows her relationships, her engagement with the mountains and the circumstances surrounding her brief life, while also examining the censorship and neglect that complicated the reception of her work.The biography is interwoven with a curated selection of Pozzi's poetry in English translation, allowing the poems to sit beside the life that produced them. For readers of literary biography, European history and mountain writing, the book restores attention to a writer for whom climbing and poetry were deeply connected.