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What: “In the Shadow of Denali”

Author: Jonathan Waterman, Lyons Press.

Price: $14.95.

Books on mountain climbing, fascinating as they are as adventure tales, tend to be fairly predictable. Mostly, only the names and faces of the victims change. Or the names and faces of the mountains they fall off of, or freeze near the top of.

This one fights admirably to break that mold.

Yes, Jonathan Waterman is a mountain climber, and yes, he has been to the top of many world-class peaks, among them North America’s tallest, McKinley--or Denali to those who hold to the tradition of its original name.

And yes, Waterman tells us about close calls and harrowing times and surviving where most couldn’t. And yes, he tells us about the deaths of friends and acquaintances, some of them legendary in this sport and one of them actually almost sharing his name but no relation, John Waterman.

While he correctly points out that mountain climbing has all too often taken on elements of a media circus that pays nicely those who survive to write or make films--the eight deaths on Everest in May 1996 triggered a cottage industry--Waterman succeeds at making this book something more than the formulaic countdown to death.

His book personifies the mountain. He describes life around it, not only near its top. It is a mountain that affects people who can only see it in the distance, people who are drawn to it for its majesty as well as its mystery. They are people like Waterman, people who will never sit in a boardroom or wear silk ties or have any idea what a 401(k) is, or even give it a second thought when it gets to 20 below zero.

If you’ve read all the trudge-to-the-top climbing books and have a working knowledge of all the corpses in all the crevasses from Everest to Machu Pichu and you still want more, try this one.

It is in its second printing, which says something right there.