With the deft evocations of a master storyteller and the exhaustive knowledge of a scholar, LeVine takes us on a quest to understand the role of religious belief in everyday life around the globe. She writes of uneasy relations between Islam and spirit possession in a Nigerian town; of a Nepalese teenager's flight from an arranged marriage to become a feminist Buddhist nun; of Mexican women taking the Virgin Mary as their role model; and of American Zen Buddhists struggling to maintain their community despite a deeply flawed teacher. These stories and more give a larger picture of religious faith, one that has little to do with doctrine or philosophical abstractions.

A biography of Elizabeth Hawley, an American woman on her own in Nepal for more than four decades, celebrated as the official chronicler of Himalayan expedition climbing.

In 1999, Lowe's husband Alex died tragically in an avalanche on the Himalayan mountains. Through letters and expedition notes from Alex, "Forget Me Not" spans continents and tells the story of three people whose lives intertwine to a degree they could never have imagined.

The biography of Charles Houston, M.D., famed for leading the heroic K2 expedition of 1953 and his pioneering research in high-altitude medicine. · Drawn from extensive interviews with Houston and full access to his letters and personal journals· Historic photos from Houston's Himalayan expeditions, Peace Corps leadership in India, pioneering high-altitude medicine research, and more · Foreword by Bill Moyers, introduction by Tom Hornbein

In August, 2005, Tomaž Humar was trapped on a narrow ledge at 5900 metres on the formidable Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat. He had been attempting a new route, directly up the middle of the highest mountain face in the world - solo. After six days he was out of food, almost out of fuel and frequently buried by avalanches. Three helicopters were poised for a brief break in the weather to pluck him off the mountain. Because of the audacity of the climb, the fame of the climber, the high risk associated with the rescue, and the hourly reports posted on his base-camp website, the world was watching. Would this be the most spectacular rescue in climbing history? Or a tragic - and very public - death in the mountains? Years before, as communism was collapsing and the Balkans slid into chaos, Humar was unceremoniously conscripted into a dirty war that he despised, where he observed brutal and inhumane atrocities that disgusted him. Finally he did the unthinkable: he left and finally arrived home in what had become a new country - Slovenia. He returned to climbing, and within very few years, he was among the best in the world. Reinhold Messner, among others, called him the most remarkable mountain climber of his generation. His routes are seldom repeated; most consider them to be suicidal; yet he often climbs them solo. As this book was being written, he achieved the first-ever solo ascent of the east summit of Annapurna. Tomaž Humar has cooperated with Bernadette McDonald, the distinguished former director of the Banff Festival and author of several books on mountaineering, to tell his utterly remarkable story.

On the night of 10-11 May 1996, eight climbers perished in what remains the worst disaster in Everest's history. Following the tragedy, numerous accounts were published, with Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air becoming an international bestseller. But has the whole story been told? A Day to Die For reveals the full, startling facts that led to the tragedy. Graham Ratcliffe, the first British climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest twice, was a first-hand witness, having spent the night on Everest's South Col at 26,000 ft, sheltering from the deadly storm. For years, he has shouldered a burden of guilt, feeling that he and his teammates could have saved lives that fateful night. His quest for answers has led to discoveries so important to an understanding of the disaster that he now questions why these facts were not made public sooner. History is dotted with high-profile disasters that both horrify and capture the attention of the public, but very rarely is our view of them revised to such devastating effect.

Operating in some of the most challenging and dangerous conditions on earth, mountain climbers are uniquely driven men and women. In these interviews, 15 well-known climbers and three leading historians of the sport, all native to or living in North America, recount experiences shared by only a tiny portion of humanity. They discuss all aspects of international climbing, including physical conditioning, high-summit ascension, the ethics and environmental concerns of the sport, the risks and rewards of mountaineering, and a number of their famed expeditions and first ascents.