Perspective

"The Climb" is a cooperative effort of two authors, Weston DeWalt and Anatoli Boukreev. The authors decided to maintain separate voices throughout the book, with the sections contributed by each appearing in different typefaces to distinguish who is writing.

In the sections written by Boukreev, the perspective is that of a first-person witness to the events being described. Boukreev is a seasoned and respected high-altitutde climber, and brings an expert perspective to his accounting of the technical aspects of the climb. Boukreev maintains his own opinions about the fitness of some of the climbers, the motivation of some of the other guides, and the subject of commercially-guided climbing, which he openly expresses. It is a personal perspective that Boukreev provides the book and one that is not always objective.

DeWalt provides the larger portion of the text, piecing together the events for which Boukreev was not present from...