Continental divide

Maurice Isserman follows four centuries of American mountaineering, moving from famous first ascents to the wider story of how peaks shaped the nation. Early settlers regarded mountains as wilderness to be tamed, but attitudes gradually shifted until mountains were seen as sites of spiritual renewal. Transcendentalists were stirred by the White Mountains, while the Rockies and Sierra Nevada drew explorers west during the age of Manifest Destiny, and Yosemite helped spark the early conservation movement.

Isserman examines how mountains influenced American social, cultural, and political life. He shows how climbers in the years around World War II formed a close fraternal bond, the so-called brotherhood of the rope, that reflected the country's view of itself as democratic. He also looks at the postwar change in equipment and attitude, along with the technical and stylistic innovations of the young rock climbers known as dirtbags.