A magisterial history of the Himalaya: an epic story of peoples, cultures, and adventures among the world's highest mountains.

For centuries, the unique and astonishing geography of the Himalaya has attracted those in search of spiritual and literal elevation: pilgrims, adventurers, and mountaineers seeking to test themselves among the world's most spectacular and challenging peaks. But far from being wild and barren, the Himalaya has been home to a diversity of indigenous and local cultures, a crucible of world religions, a crossroads for trade, and a meeting point and conflict zone for empires past and present. In this landmark work, nearly two decades in the making, Ed Douglas makes a thrilling case for the Himalaya's importance in global history and offers a soaring account of life at the "roof of the world."

Spanning millennia, from the earliest inhabitants to the present conflicts over Tibet and Everest, Himalaya explores history, culture, climate, geography, and politics. Douglas profiles the great kings of Kathmandu and Nepal; he describes the architects who built the towering white Stupas that distinguish Himalayan architecture; and he traces the flourishing evolution of Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism that brought Himalayan spirituality to the world. He also depicts with great drama the story of how the East India Company grappled for dominance with China's emperors, how India fought Mao's Communists, and how mass tourism and ecological transformation are obscuring the bloody legacy of the Cold War.

Himalaya is history written on the grandest yet also the most human scale--encompassing geology and genetics, botany and art, and bursting with stories of courage and resourcefulness.

16 pages of illustrations, 4 color photographs
Himalaya: A Human History, Ed Douglas, W. W. Norton & Company, Hardcover, 592 pp, $40.00

Ed Douglas, 54, is an award-winning journalist and author of thirteen books about mountains and their people, including the first full-length biography of Tenzing Norgay, who climbed Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953, published by National Geographic. He covered the Nepali civil war for The Observer and National Geographic, has interviewed the Dalai Lama for The Guardian and made over forty visits to the Himalaya, including a dozen mountaineering expeditions. He is a regular contributor to radio and television and was a consultant on the recent BAFTA-nominated film Sherpa. A contributor to The Guardian for thirty years he writes a column for the paper's Country Diary. He lives in Sheffield with his wife Kate, a science editor.

CONTENTS: Himalaya: A Human History
	List of Maps	ix
1	Pilgrims	1
2	Origins	19
3	The First Explorers	32
4	Lost Kingdoms	58
5	The Architects of Xanadu	80
6	The Rise of Gorkha	106
7	The High Road to Tibet	126
8	Trade Wars	151
9	The Hard Road to Sagauli	175
10	Mapping the Himalaya	201
11	The Tyrant and the Scholar	227
12	Crossing Borders	261
13	'Forbidden' City	290
14	The Plant Hunters	320
15	The First Mountaineers	349
16	Everest Diplomacy	371
17	Utopias	409
18	Summit Fever	440
19	Songs from a Dark Cell	472
20	Claiming Chomolungma	500
Acknowledgements		527
A Note on Sources		529
Bibliography		532
Index		551