In 1982, following the relaxation of access restrictions to Tibet, six climbers set off for the Himalaya to explore the little-known Shishapangma massif in Tibet. Dealing with a chaotic build-up and bureaucratic obstacles so huge they verged on comical, the mountaineers gained access to Shishapangma's unclimbed South-West Face where Doug Scott, Alex MacIntyre and Roger Baxter-Jones made one of the most audacious and stylish Himalayan climbs ever. First published in 1984 as The Shishapangma Expedition, Shishapangma won the first ever Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature. Told through a series of diary-style entries from all the climbers involved, Shishapangma reveals the difficult nature of Himalayan decision-making, mountaineering tactics and climbing relationships. Tense and candid, the six writers see every event differently, reacting in different ways and pulling no punches in their opinions of the other mountaineers - quite literally at one point. Nonetheless, the climbers, at the peak of their considerable powers and experience, completed an extremely committing enterprise. The example set by their fine climb survives and several new routes (all done in alpine style) have now been added to this magnificent face. For well-trained climbers, such ascents are fast and efficient, but the consequences of error, misjudgement or bad luck can be terminal and, sadly, soon afterwards two of the participants were struck down in mountaineering accidents - MacIntyre hit by stonefall on Annapurna's South Face and Baxter-Jones being caught by an ice avalanche on the Aiguille du Triolet. In addition their support climber, Nick Prescott, died in a Chamonix hospital from an altitude-induced ailment. Shishapangma is a gripping first-hand account of the intense reality of high-altitiude alpinism.

Nietzsche's philosophical effort is fundamentally a response to the political question of who should rule and upon what basis in the era following the death of God. Because Nietzsche's response to nihilism is so unique, scholars still debate the nature and success of his political philosophy in overcoming a spirit of revenge. In The Sovereignty of Joy: Nietzsche's Vision of Grand Politics, Alex McIntyre suggests that a sense of tragic joy is the legislating experience at the heart of Nietzsche's philosophy. A Dionysian exuberance animates all of Nietzsche's central ideas -- will to power, self-mastery, the Overman, amor fati, eternal return -- and especially his 'grand politics, ' which McIntyre argues is the political elaboration of the sovereignty of joy.

This study interprets Nietzsche's conception of tragic joy as the affirmation of the fullness of becoming at every moment, an affirmation which overcomes revenge and nihilism by embracing suffering and loss. As the embodiment of tragic joy, the Overman represents a new form of philosophical statesmanship that cannot be reduced to either a politics of domination or an idealistic utopianism, for such an interpretation ignores the 'atopian' nature of Nietzsche's grand politics. McIntyre characterizes 'atopia' as the double position of the Nietzschean philosopher at both the centre and the periphery of a political culture through the revaluation of all values.

By rediscovering the ethos of communion and the creative conception of joy that inform Nietzsche's writings, The Sovereignty of Joy persuasively challenges the notion that Nietzsche's grand politics are power politics or utopian idealism in another form.