Little Big Book
Martin F. Price. Mountains: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Mark Twain once wrote a friend that he didn’t have time to write a short letter so he wrote a long one instead. This may be the longest short book ever written. It’s part of Oxford University Press’s useful series of brief, inexpensive paperback intros to a great variety of subjects (from Accounting to Derrida to Writing and Script). The author of this volume is the right person for the job: Martin Price is Director of the Centre for Mountain Studies at Perth College, University of the Highlands and Islands, in Scotland; and the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Mountain Development. As Brent Olson was dreaming up the Institute for Mountain Research, he found the literature for Perth III: Mountains of Our Future Earth, an international conference that is held once every five years and that has become the world’s biggest gathering of mountain scholars. Martin Price organized and presided over the conference, and the opening session coincided with the publication of his little green book. Attendees, including the IMR directors, walked around clutching their copies like the sayings of Chairman Mao.
Price begins by defining “mountains,” using criteria developed with USGS data in the 1990s. He provides persuasive answers to the question “why do mountains matter?” Mountainous terrain covers nearly ¼ of the earth’s surface, and some 26% of people live in or near mountains. Humans began cultivating many food crops in the mountains, which also contain stores of useful or desirable minerals. Mountains have long been culturally important as well; religions around the world consider certain peaks as sacred. Mount Kailash in Tibet, for example, is revered in four separate traditions and has reportedly never been climbed.
Chapter two contains a rapid but readable synopsis of the making and unmaking of mountains, from plate tectonics through glacial, fluvial, and wind erosion. The heart of the book, however, is chapter three, “The World’s Water Towers” (a phrase we heard repeatedly in Perth). Price emphasizes the essential role that mountains play in the water cycle. Utah residents can certainly relate, as we are all too familiar with the consequences of poor snow years in the Wasatch and other ranges for our water supply.
The remainder of the book details life in the mountains, emphasizing the rapid changes in conditions with altitude as well as the many ways humans and their domestic animals have adapted to those conditions. Price touches on the tremendous biodiversity of certain mountains, especially tropical mountain forests. An avid mountaineer, Price describes the worldwide mountain tourist industry and efforts to protect mountainous landscapes. He concludes with the topic uppermost on the mountain studies agenda: climate change. Mountain observatories like Mauna Loa have provided much of the alarming evidence of our rapidly warming world. Conditions are changing in the mountains faster than in lowland areas as glaciers recede and plants and animals move higher or disappear, with unknown but likely grim consequences.
This very short introduction packs a tremendous amount of information in 134 pages, but Price employs a readable, clear style with a minimum of jargon, an admirable and difficult task for a book that covers so much interdisciplinary terrain. It’s a book that mountain studies scholars will turn to many times.
