Alan V. Goldman’s “Reflections on Mountaineering” Will Be on Display at the 2023 San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books

Alan V. Goldman’s “Reflections on Mountaineering: A Journey Through Life as Experienced in the Mountains” (FIFTH Edition, Revised and Expanded: June 2023) will be displayed by the self-publishing and book marketing company ReadersMagnet at the 2023 San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. The book festival will be held at 5998 Alcala Park, San Diego, CA, on August 19, 2023.

The San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books is a huge book event that will be presented by the University of San Diego. Authors, avid readers, book sellers, literary influences, and book industry professionals are among the people expected to attend the festival, which is now on its 7th edition. There will be workshops, author panel sessions, book displays, and other exciting activities for attendees.

“Reflections on Mountaineering” is a poetry anthology that features one hundred thirty-eight narrative-style poems that focus on the mountaineering experiences of the Author. The poems are written in rhyme, as blank verse, and as prose poems. They manifest Goldman’s creativity and versatility. Many of the stories animating the poems are drawn from the author’s life, while others are derived from the experiences of his fellow climbers.

The Author wrote the poems to reveal human behavior in the face of fear and awe; and, inter alia, to explore the role of luck, fate, and chance. Certain poems deal with the human perception of the passage of time, and the perception of reality, in the context of endeavoring to understand the “meaning of life” itself.

Since the publication of the Fourth Edition, Revised and Expanded, the Author added eighteen poems in a new Section entitled: “Afterthoughts” (Poems Nos. 38 through 55), to enable readers to delve into the experience of mountaineering even further. Readers are invited to obtain an insight into what it feels like, and what it means, to be on the precipitous heights.

Of course, the Book, as a whole, has several pervasive themes, which are referenced in the FIFTH Edition, Revised and Expanded, i.e.:

(1) the concept of Existentialism (creating “something out of nothing” merely by virtue of climbing the mountain itself, thereby adding to the mountain’s collective “lore,” inter alia);

(2) the experience of the psychological state of mind known as positive “Flow,” or “being in the moment,” or “in the Zone” -- a trance-like state of mind in which the climber attains a sense of mastery over his environment, and experiences a calm sense of exaltation -- all while being entirely engrossed in the series of actions required to climb in the first place; and,

(3) the exploration of the meaning of the mountaineer’s age-old adage of “The Freedom of the Hills,” which the Author contends is encompassed by the “Unalienable Right” to “the Pursuit of Happiness,” as proclaimed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which posits that such a freedom is one of the primary reasons for which governments are actually instituted, the others being the right to Life and Liberty,

Interested parties can obtain a copy of Alan V. Goldman’s “Reflections on Mountaineering: A Journey Through Life as Experienced in the Mountains” (FIFTH Edition, Revised and Expanded: June 2023) on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Learn more about the author and his book at the Author’s Website about the Book: www.mountainreflections.art.

“Reflections on Mountaineering: A Journey Through Life as Experienced in the Mountains” (Fifth Edition: 2023)
Author| Alan V. Goldman
Genre| Adventure; Natural World; Philosophy; Human Behavior
Publisher| BookSide Press
Published Date| June 2023

Author’s Biography

Alan V. Goldman is a graduate of Horace Mann School (1975); Harvard College (1979); and Harvard Law School (1982), and is an elected Member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society (the motto’s meaning, in Greek, being that: “Learning is the Guide to Life”). He practiced environmental law and “toxic tort” litigation on Wall Street for many years and is now retired.

Contact Information

Elizabeth Patino

Author Relations Officer

ReadersMagnet LLC.

Contact via E-mail