The Boys of Everest', which received enormous praise when published in hardback, tells the story of a band of climbers who reinvented mountaineering during the three decades after Everest's first ascent. It is a story of tremendous courage, astonishing acheivement and heartbreaking loss. Their leader was the boyish, fanatically driven Chris Bonington. His inner circle – they came to be known as Bonington's Boys – included a dozen who became climbing's greatest generation. Bonington's Boys gave birth to a new brand of climbing. They took increasingly terrible risks on now-legendary expeditions to the world's most fearsome peaks. And they paid an enormous price for their acheivements. Most of Bonington's boys died in the mountains, leaving behind the hardest question of all: was it worth it?