Annapurna

No one had ever climbed an 8,000-meter (26,250-ft.) peak when Herzog led a team of the best climbers in France to Annapurna in 1950. Maps were sketchy and inadequate; they had trouble even finding the peak. They climbed without oxygen. The weather was bad. Nevertheless, Herzog and Louis Lachenal made it to the top. But on the descent, disaster: lost gloves, frostbite, an avalanche. When rescue came, Herzog had almost given up and could hardly move. He lost all his fingers and thus did not write but dictated this book. It has its faults, mostly in Herzog's failure to credit his teammates as fairly as he might. Yet it conveys the essential spirit of climbing as no popular book had before and earns its place here as the most influential mountaineering book of all time.