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About Mountain Madness...
Best known as one of the guides who perished near the summit of Mount Everest during the tragic spring of 1996, Scott Fischer was devoted to climbing the highest and most dangerous peaks on earth. In this vivid, candid biography, Robert Birkby—one of Scott's close friends—gives a fascinating, in-depth portrait of the forty years of Scott's life that led up to those final forty days at the top of the world.
The movie EVEREST, with actor Jake Gyllanhall starring as Scott Fischer, will be released in the autumn of 2015. For the full story of Scott's life and climbs, check out Mountain Madness: Scott Fischer, Mt. Everest and a Life Lived on High.
“Scott’s life was a journey filled with adventures, deep friendships, and dramatic successes and failures in the obscure reaches of some of the world’s most beautiful and dangerous places. A captivating homage to a man who eagerly went where few dare to go, Mountain Madness is an extraordinary account of courage, passion, and extreme living.”
“Birkby succeeds in illuminating the power mountains can exert over the human soul.”
“Scott Fischer is best known as the charismatic American guide who died on Everest in 1996, a disaster told in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. To his friend Robert Birkby, for Fischer to be remembered for that tragedy alone is an unjust summation of an extraordinary life. Mountain Madness is a personal, uncritical biography that rounds out the portrait of Fischer sketched in Krakauer’s best-seller Into Thin Air.”
“A much fuller picture of a climber widely critiqued in high-profile coverage after the Everest tragedy.”