... fascinating ... The sections covering mountaineering history are particularly strong. This is to be welcomed, because there was a period when British mountaineers took almost too pragmatic an approach to the Himalaya. They were regarded as lumps of rock to be conquered and any spiritual values were considered a distraction ... Douglas weaves a far richer tapestry, showing how this is a sacred landscape influenced by very worldly concerns ... In telling his story, Douglas certainly puts down a lot of fixed ropes to make the ascent. Some readers may find the accretion of detail overwhelming — too many footnotes make it into the text — and wish for a bit more free climbing. But it is still impressive. This is a magisterial account of the complex human history of the greatest mountains on Earth.

Douglas’s quixotic and densely packed history of Himalayan peoples is not the book to read if you are looking for an easy contemporary analysis of the China-India confrontation on the roof of the world or the ecological catastrophe in the mountains that give birth to Asia’s great rivers ... Douglas has achieved something more valuable than describe current events: he has examined the ancient origins of those events with a scholarly yet entertaining synthesis of hundreds of years of history ... You can detect a slight bias in the weight of his coverage towards the art of mountaineering and also towards the complex history of Nepal — there must be more detail on political intrigues in Kathmandu and Gorkha than even the most dedicated Nepalese coup-plotter would want to know — but Douglas’s enthusiasm for diversions is infectious rather than obstructive.

... the fruit of an enormous amount of research that focuses on the conquest of the mountains and the interconnected kingdoms and states that vied for control. [Douglas's] observations are sharp, and in many passages, his writing glows ... Douglas clearly has an affection for this part of the world. But this book in itself is a bit of a mountain to climb, nearly 600 densely packed pages — its own Everest. At times, the story disappears, like a road tapering off, into a jungle of facts. Douglas is a madman for facts. You want to know the name of the most famous person born in the same town as the Italian scholar Giuseppe Tucci? Or how snowfall on the Tibetan plateau affects Canadian winters? Or which part of yak fur is best for making tent ropes? Have no fear. Douglas has got it ... The narrative is most exciting when it’s focused on mountain climbers.

... suitably immense ... Few can pretend to know its totality and Douglas admits to focusing on just the central two-thirds. His overlooking the zone’s extremities in Afghanistan/Tajikistan and Myanmar/China may be forgiveable. But while the Kathmandu Valley and central Tibet feature prominently in his text, the Kashmir Valley and western Tibet deserve more than occasional mention ... If 'grasping after the particular' is indeed a Western trait, Douglas’s compendium turns it to good account by enlivening Himālaya’s disjointed history with a host of minor characters ... Such unsung endeavours are a delight. They pop up in the text like marmots, the furry ground-squirrels of the Tibetan upland that bob from view before you can reach them, though not before their burrows have wrenched an ankle from its socket ... Douglas is said to have been working on his book for twenty-five years. The research is impressive. His bibliography runs to twenty pages and lists around a thousand titles. Scholars may regret the absence of source notes in such a major work, and the general reader may wonder whether the narrative would not have been better served if copious asides in the treatment of, for instance, Nepal’s dynastic squabbles had been relegated to end-notes. But the thirty-page index is some help in navigating the always authoritative text, and this is certainly not a book to be dismissed lightly. Anyone with a serious interest in the Himalayan region will want to buy it and will find it invaluable.

Most of the history is drawn from European sources and viewpoints, first from missionaries and traders, followed by East India Company and British officials, and expanding to include some local sources closer to present day. Nonetheless, a comprehensive outsiders’ view of tribal and royal intrigue is explored in detail, often to dizzying effect given the vast locations, time, and number of individuals involved ... Douglas helpfully includes details of how Buddhism gained prominence in the region, the influence of trade routes, and how the tectonic forces that created the world’s tallest mountain shaped events as much as the two regional superpowers, China and India, with an invasive and oversized role played by the East India Company and Britain ... For readers interested in a detailed, wide-ranging overview of the history and people of the Himalaya in relation to outside influences.

Robust ... Douglas, who has visited the region more than 40 times, has obviously combed through several libraries’ worth of material on all things related to the Abode of Snow, as the Sanskrit word Himalayas translates ... A towering addition to any geography or mountaineering buff’s library.

Extreme landscapes, vibrant cultures, and tumultuous politics animate this sweeping history of the Himalayan region ... vivid detail. Providing a corrective to romantic Western stereotypes of the region as the homeland of spiritual purity, Douglas notes the allure of Himalayan cultures but is clear-eyed about the prosaic economic motives that shape life there. Written in elegant prose with sharply etched profiles of historical figures, this engrossing account offers a fresh, revealing portrait of a much-mythologized place.