The High Sierra

A Love Story

Hardcover, 560 pages

Published Nov. 11, 2022 by Little, Brown and Company.

ISBN:
978-0-316-59301-4
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5 stars (1 review)

Kim Stanley Robinson first ventured into the Sierra Nevada mountains during the summer of 1973. He returned from that encounter a changed man, awed by a landscape that made him feel as if he were simultaneously strolling through an art museum and scrambling on a jungle gym like an energized child. He has returned to the mountains throughout his life—more than a hundred trips—and has gathered a vast store of knowledge about them. The High Sierra is his lavish celebration of this exceptional place and an exploration of what makes this span of mountains one of the most compelling places on Earth.

Over the course of a vivid and dramatic narrative, Robinson describes the geological forces that shaped the Sierras and the history of its exploration, going back to the indigenous peoples who made it home and whose traces can still be found today. He celebrates the people whose ideas …

3 editions

KSR at his most indulgent

5 stars

I really enjoyed this but probably only because I'm a huge KSR fan; there's a lot to criticize but I devoured this in a week on a bikepacking trip and I appreciated reading about his life through this one particular lens, despite never having been to the sierras or knowing anything about them. Understanding how this mountain range threads through his fiction is really cool. The way it was all organized into sections was really cool as well.