The price of life is death' For Mallory as for all of his generation death was but a frail barrier that men crossed smiling & gallant every day' As climbers they accepted a degree of risk unimaginable before the war What mattered now was how one lived & the moments of being alive While the quest for Mount Everest may have begun as a grand imperial gesture it ended as a mission of revival for a country & a lost generation bled white by war In a monumental work of history & adventure Davis asks not whether George Mallory was the first to reach the summit of Everest but rather why he kept climbing on that fateful day