Imaginary Peaks
The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams

I finished Imaginary Peaks last night. It took me a while, as the writing demands close and careful attention. Of course, that always makes the reading more rewarding. It's a really beautiful story. The weaving together of narratives, the intentionality of the language on a sentence level, the imager......more

A beautiful book that is about mountaineering, hoaxes, and adventuring into and protecting those mountains of our lives. Ives weaves in research, biographies, adventure, and thoughtfulness to create a book that inspires and teaches us. Beautiful.......more

My new favorite nonfiction. It's funny and hopeful. It includes all the history you need to know if you don't climb. The beginning is the history of ridiculous map mistakes like non-existant island and "really really tall" mountains that are then hard to find because they aren't. And what humans hav......more

In Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams, Katie Ives maps an inner world as subtle and lovely as the mountainous natural world. Her visual imagery transports us from glorious peaks to the depths of imagination, with an exploration through culture and humanity in between. I......more

I was so excited to read this; Katie Ives’ writing is always stunning, and this book had me hooked right from the title. Imaginary Peaks is an intriguing exploration of the fascination held by empty spaces on the map, and of mountains that aren’t represented on maps. Mountaineering has always felt ot......more