The Push

Starred review from May 15, 2017
Rock climber Caldwell, one of National Geographic’s 2014 Adventurers of the Year, expertly blends the triumphs and tragedies of a life well lived with discussions of mastering the vertical climb. The self-described “shy, socially awkward” boy developed into a mature, disciplined athlete under the guidance of his father—a former bodybuilder and mountain guide—who encouraged him to embrace a risk-and-reward concept of life. Caldwell quickly became one of America’s competitive climbing success stories, with climbing stints in Bolivia and France under his belt by age 16. At age 22, in 2000, he met Beth Rodden, who became his climbing partner and later his wife. Shortly after they met, they hiked with a small group to the remote mountains of Kyrgyzstan and were captured by armed Islamic militants. He describes those six terrifying days of captivity, which ended when Caldwell pushed a captor off a cliff, enabling the group to flee to safety. Even the devastating breakup with Rodden in 2010, he writes, couldn’t dampen his zest for scaling his most challenging project: the 19-day free ascent of the perilous Dawn Wall of Yosemite’s El Capitan. Caldwell’s book is an eloquent, absorbing story about testing one’s limits.