Kathmandu, Jan. 24 -- Both a soaring celebration and a sacramental offering to the highest mountain range in the world, everything you ever wanted to know about the Himalaya is found between the covers of this magnificent, ambitious and panoramic book.

An 'abode of snows' love story featuring kaleidoscopic cultures, spiritual elevation, migrating peoples, epic adventures and colliding colonial conflicts, this first major history of the Himalaya tackles a vast subject, taking the reader on a rollicking journey that starts with the geological crash of tectonic plates 50 million years ago, and brings us to present day disputes about national borders and contentious commercial expeditions.

Although it spans millennia, Ed Douglas has an envi...