Brilliant! Long overdue!
Reviewer:
Bradley Robinson
from Mountain View, CA
Washburn is a thorough detective who leaves no doubt
Cook was a fraud. His photography from airplanes, and
the illustrations show the true scale of the mountains,
peaks, glaciers, etc. surrounding McKinley. This makes
it easy to understand why his companions back at camp
immediately recognized Cook's claim as a lie. They knew
he could not have covered all that distance, climbed
that mother of all mountains, and then come back in so
few days.
What fascinates me is how Cook got the public to
believe it by working the media. His magazine stories
and photos, books, lectures, all created the illusion
that he had done something spectacular. But he had not!
He only went camping ...
Washburn is a remarkable individual, a fine writer,
and a photographer on a par with Ansel Adams. This work
is a masterpiece from a mountaineering genius. It is too
bad he had nothing more than Cook to use as a foil.
By the way - the publisher made a serious mistake
using the smallest type font used for body text I have
ever seen in a book. One could increase font size
several points and still have generous margins. What
were they thinking? This is tiny text! A flaw I'll try
to overlook from this magnificent end to the Cook
debate.
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