Exceptional Mountains

Please join us at BookPeople of Moscow for a reading and book signing with O. Alan Weltzien. Dr. Weltzien is a professor of English at the University of Montana–Western. He has published many books, including his two new books, "Exceptional Mountains: A Cultural Study of the Pacific Northwest Volcanoes" and "Rembrandt in the Stairwell". Exceptional Mountains is a cultural history of the Northwest volcanoes and the environmental impact of outdoor recreation in this region. It probes the relationship between these volcanoes and regional identity, particularly in the era of mass mountaineering and population growth in the Northwest. Dr. Weltzien demonstrates how mountaineering is but one conspicuous example of the outdoor recreation industry’s unrestricted and problematic growth. He explores the implications of our assumptions that there are no limits to our outdoor recreation habits and that access to the highest mountains should include amenities for affluent consumers. Each chapter probes the mountain-based regional ethos and the concomitant sense of privilege and entitlement from different vantages to illuminate the consumerist mind-set as a reductive—and deeply problematic—version of experience and identity in and around some of the nation’s most striking mountains.