Tap Dancing on Everest
A Young Doctor’s Unlikely Adventure
by Mimi Zieman, MD
This book really stands out among the many volumes on Everest and the Himalayas that I have read. Written by a woman who is not a professional climber, it has a very different tone and feel. Most accounts of mountaineering expeditions focus on the adventure itself, here the climb is only described in the last part of the book. Instead, the author recounts in detail her unlikely path to it — from a difficult upbringing as a child of Jewish immigrants in New York City, with all the survivor trauma inherited from her parents, to battling her eating disorder and inferiority complex, to studying medicine and training to be a doctor. It can be a painful, emotional read at times.
She doesn’t shy away from the gruesome details of trekking in the Himalayas either — I think both her gender and her medical training made her much more open about the realities of high mountains, including the physiological ones. If you felt intimidated after reading Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, I don’t think you’ll ever decide to climb an 8,000er after reading this book. Of course, she is writing about a time before commercial climbing began (this shift is well chronicled in another forthcoming book, “Everest, Inc”), so she faced many more challenges than today’s tourists.
If you are interested in mountaineering, I think this book will give you a new, original view of the Himalayan experience.
Thanks to the publisher, Globe Pequot, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
