The Vast Unknown: America's First Ascent of Everest Hardcover - 2013

Media reviews

"This book is like a time capsule from the Cold War, showing how in 1963, a bunch of crazy American mountaineers embarked on a plan to ascend via the never-before-summited west ridge, while racing a Chinese group to the top." – Sacramento Bee

"Coburn brings this exciting chapter of American mountaineering history to life." – Library Journal

“A sweeping account of the first American visitors to Mount Everest’s peak….Coburn’s unhurried, character-driven narrative pays scrupulous attention to the climb’s every detail and to Everest’s majestic natural history….An exhilarating slice of American adventure-sporting history.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Gripping… Not just another book about mountain climbing, this is also a story of America in the early 1960s.” –Booklist

“Broughton Coburn has written a book to renew our faith in what it means to believe in each other, and in ourselves. This is what it looked like when ordinary men of extraordinary courage and self-discipline worked through tragedy, dissent, and hardship not for individual glory but toward a common goal. When were we last this self-effacing, this optimistic, this outrageously can-do? A compulsively entertaining read.” – Alexandra Fuller, author of Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness