RSS Feeds  Everest saga wins Samuel Johnson nonfiction prize
Monday - 11/12/2012, 5:08pm  ET  LONDON (AP) - A gripping
account of a doomed attempt to climb Mount Everest has won
Britain's leading nonfiction book prize.   British mountaineer
Mallory _ the man who famously declared he wanted to climb
Everest "because it is there" _ died on the world's highest peak
in 1924, and debate still rages about whether he reached the
summit.  Davis sets the expedition in the context of Britain's
imperial history and the trauma of World War I.    Davis beat
five other shortlisted titles, including Katherine Boo's "Behind
The Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum"
and Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels Of Our Nature: A History
Of Violence and Humanity."   Davis, the National Geographic
Society's explorer-in-residence, has written 15 books on topics
ranging from Haitian zombies to the Amazon rainforest.