The Mammoth Book Of Mountain Disasters edited by Hamish MacInness (Robinson, £7.99)

YOU may ask why some people try so hard to fight for the lives of others, often harder than you would think humanly possible.

Pushing their bodies to the limit, thousands of feet up on snow-swept wastes, with temperatures well below freezing and winds blowing at 64 mph, mountain rescuers often find themselves in their own grim battle for survival as they risk their lives for someone who, perhaps through an act of folly, has been injured.

It's because the rescuers are usually climbers who may have been rescued themselves in the past - or are grimly aware that, with a twist of fate, they, too, could have plunged 2,000 vertical feet down a mountain to end up a mutilated mess.

An extraordinary collection of 35 first-hand accounts of rescues on the world's highest slopes is featured here, edited by MacInnes, one of the world's most respected mountaineers, who has many dramatic and horrific tales to tell himself.

The volume spans five continents, from the Appalachians to Mount Cook, from Peak Lenin to Siula Grande.

It includes nightmare reading such as the tale of a climber seen to freeze to death by his stranded rescuers on the Eiger, to one man being buried for 12 hours under one of the biggest avalanches ever on New Zealand's Mount Cook.

The price of adventure on the world's ice-laden mountains is high - broken limbs, frostbitten fingers, toes, and the loss of legs. But the courage and daring of the rescuers is beyond imagination.

Mountain rescue facilities vary. In some countries a slick, instant pick-you-off-the-mountain service is in operation.

In more out-of-the-way mountain ranges, it's often a backbreaking trudge to reach the victim.

The rescue teams are usually volunteers who, when the alarm goes up, will go out in atrocious weather conditions, covering slopes and peaks, abseiling down ice-covered rock-faces or riding in storm-tossed helicopters in the hopes of finding a stricken climber. Often, a body covered by snow is their reward.

A great book, it's a real eye-opener, telling of courage at its highest which no fictional hero can match. It's a collection of stories about ordinary mortals whose achievements were extraordinary.

Beverly Abbs