Paul Preuss: Lord of the Abyss: Life and Death at the Birth of Free-Climbing

Description

Shortlisted for the 2019 Boardman Tasker Award Shortlisted for the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature 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 died on Mount Everest in 1924, said "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. Alex Honnold, the first and only person to free solo El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, has thought about Preuss' untimely and surprising death and imagined it to have likely been "the worst four seconds" of Preuss' life. 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. Smart's biography is the first English language volume to be published and is certain to bring the remarkable story of Paul Preuss to a whole new generation of climbers.

David Smart is the editorial director of Gripped Publishing and founding editor of four magazines, including Gripped, Canada's Climbing Magazine. He is the author of five climbing guidebooks and numerous articles in both the Canadian Alpine Journal and Climbing magazine, as well as two novels and the memoir A Youth Wasted Climbing. David lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Praise for Paul Preuss: Life and Death at the Birth of Free-Climbing: Shortlisted for the 2019 Boardman Tasker Award Shortlisted for the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature "The finest biography of an adventure figure I have ever found. I cringe to think of the years of research needed to dog down all the information, more than a century after it happened. And the journalistic chops to frame it all so cogently made me jealous of Smart as a writer." -John Long, author of The Stonemasters: California Rock Climbers in the Seventies, The High Lonesome: Epic Solo Climbing Stories and Long on Adventure: The Best of John Long "Smart...has intricately woven stories of Preuss' life and accomplishments with vivid illustrations of the times and the rising middle class in the outdoors into a magnificent biography." -The Suburban Mountaineer "Was [Preuss] a patriarch or pariah? The argument continues, yet the path Preuss set, which has wound through climbing for a century, led directly to Alex Honnold's successful free solo on Yosemite's fearsome El Capitan. As such, this book introduces the origin of the notion to a new generation of climbers." -Mountain Life Annual "This book's sub-subhead - Life and Death at the Birth of Free Climbing - attempts to summarize a formative period immediate post Europe's Golden Age of Alpinism, when mountaineering, rock-climbing and skiing were changing public perception of the mountains that had surrounded them forever." -Mountain Life Annual "Paul Preuss: Lord of the Abyss is a skillfully written and meticulously researched book." - Climber Magazine UK "David Smart has offered the reader an insightful portrait of an intriguing young man so strong in body and mind." - Climber Magazine UK "Climbers talk of 'feeding the rat', a hunger to climb more and more and David reflects that, for Paul, climbing in a pure style was his 'food for immortality', a food which carried him to the most beautiful places on so many extraordinary adventures." -Climber Magazine UK "[Paul Preuss: Lord of the Abyss] is an intriguing dive into the [Preuss'] life and accomplishments..." -Revelstoke Mountaineer Praise for Emilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites: Shortlisted for the 2020 Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature "Utterly in command of the obscure primary sources, David Smart has crafted a compelling biography of climbing's great misunderstood genius. From the life of Emilio Comici, Smart has extracted new insights into mountaineering itself. It's a dazzling achievement." -David Roberts, author of Escalante's Dream and Limits of the Known "Emilio Comici was one of the most important mountaineers of the Sixth Grade years and a lover of climbing aesthetics, and yet no complete and exhaustive biography of him had been written before now. With this new book David Smart has filled a void in the history of mountaineering." -Mirella Tenderini, author of The Duke of Abruzzi: An Explorer's Life and Gary Hemming: The Beatnik of the Alps "David Smart's immensely knowledgeable and beautifully written biography of Emilio Comici establishes the Italian climber as one of the leading alpinists of the 20th century, an innovator in technical climbing, free soloing, big-wall climbing, and the aesthetic of the direttissima. Smart's thrilling description of Comici's first ascent of the North Face of the Cima Grande in Italy's Dolomites in 1933 literally took my breath away, and places the climb in the same league as the first ascent of the Matterhorn and that of the North Face of the Eiger. This is one of the best climbing biographies I have ever read." -Maurice Isserman, co-author of Fallen Giants and author of Continental Divide "David Smart has created a nuanced and elegant biography of Emilio Comici, a climber who was immersed in the simmering ideological tension of eastern Italy between the two Great Wars, and who cared deeply about the aesthetics of climbing." -Bernadette McDonald, author of Art of Freedom, Alpine Warriors, Freedom Climbers and Keeper of the Mountains "Emilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites cements David Smart as one of the most important mountain biographers of our time. He's proven, once again, that he's a master of meticulous research, expert at unweaving a myth from a man, and uniquely able to offer insight in how time, and place, and mountains themselves, all work to shape the character of a mountain life." -Geoff Powter, author of Inner Ranges"In Emilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites David Smart fills an enormous gap in English-only readers' grasp of mountaineering history. Those who knew only of Comici's famous diretissima dictum - that the route should follow the line of a water drop - can now read the full story. And what a story it is! Comici was an enigmatic visionary, highly principled and widely misunderstood. His was a world of unclimbed faces and divisive politics, both within the climbing world and in the world at large. Smart's brilliance is equally even-handed as both biographer and cultural historian. A long-awaited and absolutely essential book." -David Stevenson, book review editor of the American Alpine Journal and author of Warnings Against Myself: Meditations on a Life in Climbing "This absorbing biography vividly reveals how Emilo Comici, perhaps more than any other climber of the 20th century, shaped the future of big-wall climbing. Comici embodied the futuristic vision of Mussolini's Italy where fascism, new technology and the spiritual glorification of the Sixth Grade fused together on the great unclimbed walls of the Dolomites. David Smart writes with the authority of a top investigative journalist and the skills of a dramatist who brings the rivalries and romances of history alive on a vertiginous stage." -John Porter, author of One Day as a Tiger