Acclaimed as the world's greatest living mountaineer, Reinhold Messner became the first climber to ascend all 14 of the world's 8000 metre peaks. This book is drawn from a selection of his writings, but also includes much previousely unpublished material, and forms a compendium of his major expeditions to the world's foremost mountains, including Gasherbrum, Naga Parbat, K2 and his epic ascent of Everest in 1978 without the aid of oxygen. Other work by the author includes "All Eight-Thousanders" and "Antartica - Both Heaven and Hell".