Annapurna: Conquest of the First 8000 metre peak

In 1950 a French expedition led by Maurice Herzog became the first to summit a peak over 8,000 metres. They paid for it. The descent was a fortnight of frostbite, gangrene, snow blindness and field amputations performed without anaesthetic. Herzog wrote this book from a hospital bed during the three years it took him to recover. It has sold over eleven million copies and remains the most famous mountaineering book ever written. The closing line, "there are other Annapurnas in the lives of men", is one of the most quoted in mountain literature.