In a famous photograph, Bradford Washburn shows pinpoint-small climbers on the crest of the Alps after a storm.
(Panopticon Gallery)
Shelf Life
Ever upward
In a famous photograph, Bradford Washburn shows pinpoint-small climbers on the crest of the Alps after a storm.
(Panopticon Gallery)
Bradford Washburn was a wonder as a climber, photographer, cartographer, and museum builder. His course in life was set by a book about Mont Blanc that he received as a Christmas gift.
Fellow climber David Roberts captures his friend’s single-mindedness and fearlessness in “The Last of His Kind: The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America’s Boldest Mountaineer’’ (Morrow), beingpublished Tuesday
A native of Cambridge, Washburn died two years ago at age 96. When he was 16, Washburn spent a summer climbing in the French Alps. Three years later, he was one of the top climbers in the United States. As a student at Harvard, he traveled the country giving paid lectures about his expeditions. He made nine first ascents of peaks in North America and established himself as the premier mountaineer in Alaskan history. In the Yukon Territory, he discovered the most extensive glacier outside of Antarctica.
At 28, he was hired as director of the New England Museum of Natural History. He set it on a bold expansion, renaming it the Museum of Science and moving it from the Back Bay to its present site at the mouth of the Charles River.
He was a self-taught photographer, producing stunning aerial images with a 53-pound camera as he steeled himself against the plane door opening. He produced definitive maps of Mount McKinley, Mount Washington, and the Grand Canyon, and proved that Mount Everest is 7 feet higher than had been thought. It was one of the few mountains he had his eye on that he didn’t manage to climb.
On God and cosmos
Ron Currie Jr. of Waterville, Maine, has been hailed as a rising star of literary fiction. His first book, “God Is Dead,’’ in which God descends to Earth as a Dinka woman from Sudan, last year earned him the New York Public Library’s $10,000 Young Lions Fiction Award. This spring Currie won a $10,000 award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.This week Currie’s eagerly awaited second book is being published. “Everything Matters!’’ (Viking) is another darkly funny, inventive story that invites comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut’s work. The main character is Junior Thibodeau, born to a working-class family in Maine, who learns in utero that a comet will obliterate life on Earth in 36 years. He grows up wondering, “Does anything I do matter?’’ In addressing that question, Currie weaves in the Challenger explosion, the Oklahoma City bombing, and a President Huckabee.
Newton clubbing
Newtonville Books has a new offer for Dan Brown fans: Buy a one-year membership for $50 and receive a free copy of “The Lost Symbol,’’ Brown’s sequel to “The Da Vinci Code,’’ being published on Sept. 15.Coming out
Pick of the week
Nancy Ockers of Titcomb’s Bookshop in East Sandwich recommends “Scaredy Squirrel at Night’’ by Melanie Watt (Kids Can): “I have loved the ‘Scaredy Squirrel’ picture books from the very first one, but the latest one may be the best. It addresses a very common childhood fear (the big bad night) in a way that is fun and potentially helpful.’’Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com. 
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