Climbing: The Complete Reference to Rock, Ice and Indoor Climbing

Rating:
Summary: Informative and often funny
Review: Greg Child is one of the very best writers in mountaineering and this excellent reference book is up to his high standards and often displays Child's sly sense of humor. Child has choses his contributers well. It is very informative and I believe that both experienced climbers and armchair mountaineers will benefit from it as he nicely defines many of the terms that are bandied about in other mountaineering adventures and expedition books. Child also discusses the issues and controvercies in mountaineering and includes excellent summeries of many of the main events in mountaineering history.

Rating:
Summary: Informative and often funny
Review: Greg Child is one of the very best writers in mountaineering and this excellent reference book is up to his high standards and often displays Child's sly sense of humor. Child has choses his contributers well. It is very informative and I believe that both experienced climbers and armchair mountaineers will benefit from it as he nicely defines many of the terms that are bandied about in other mountaineering adventures and expedition books. Child also discusses the issues and controvercies in mountaineering and includes excellent summeries of many of the main events in mountaineering history.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book, Bad Editing
Review: This is a very useful book: the sport of climbing really needed an dictionary-type work. Unfortunately, the facts needed to be better checked, as in a couple of instances they are incomplete or even just plain wrong. More illustrations would also be good. I hope that a new edition may come out which will correct the above problems and make this book the indispensable tool it deserves to be.