In the midst of the Cold War, against the backdrop of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the space race with the Soviet Union, and the Vietnam War, a band of iconoclastic American mountaineers set off for Mount Everest, aiming to restore America's confidence and optimism. Their objective was to reach the summit while conducting scientific research, but which route would they take? Might the Chinese have reached the top ahead of them? And what about another American team, led by the grandson of a President, that nearly bagged the peak in a bootleg attempt a year earlier?

THE VAST UNKNOWN: America's First Ascent of Everest (Manaslu Books, 2022; first published by Crown Publishers in 2013) is New York Times-bestselling author BROUGHTON COBURN's harrowing, character-driven account of this momentous climb and its legendary team of alternately inspiring, troubled, and tragic climbers who suffered injuries, a near mutiny, and death on the mountain. It is also an examination of the profound sway the expedition had over the American consciousness during a time when the country was searching for its identity.

THE VAST UNKNOWN also investigates the expedition's little-known outcome: the selection of a team to plant a CIA surveillance device on the Himalayan peak of Nanda Devi, to spy into China, where nuclear missile testing was underway. Packed with riveting adventure, THE VAST UNKNOWN brings the first American expedition to life and provides perceptive analysis of the climb's dark historical context, just in time for the climb's 60th anniversary, in May of 2022.