The Moth and the Mountain

From New Yorker writer Ed Caesar, The Moth and the Mountain is a sweeping true story about one man's attempt to salve the wounds of war and save his own soul through an audacious adventure: flying his biplane five thousand miles across the world and attempting to become the first person to summit Mt. Everest. In the 1930s, as official government expeditions set their sights on conquering Everest, a little-known World War I veteran named Maurice Wilson conceived his own crazy, beautiful plan: he would fly a plane from England to Everest, crash land on its lower slopes, then become the first person to reach its summit—all utterly alone. Wilson didn't know how to climb. He barely knew how to fly. But he had the right plane, the right equipment, and a deep yearning to achieve his goal. In 1933, he took off from London in a Gipsy Moth biplane with his course set for the highest mountain on earth. Wilson's eleven-month journey to Everest was wild: full of...