Is THE DESCENT autobiographical?
I’ve sprinkled in a friend or two for fun. More to the point, I drew on some of my travels, especially for the chapters about Bosnia and Tibet. I was an election supervisor for Bosnia’s first election under OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It was an amazing experience, partially in educating me about how fantastic NATO is at doing its job. During my time there, I interviewed everyone I could, including American soldiers at various camps. As for the Himalayas, I first visited there thirty years ago, and I’ve returned a dozen times or so. I’ve led and climbed on expeditions to Everest and Makalu, and that gave me a sense of how real expeditions work. The social contract can get pretty tattered when you’re in a pressure cooker at high altitude and in a dangerous environment. Personalities clash. Mutinies simmer. Little details take on enormous magnitude, things like a last candy bar or someone’s snoring. So my experience in the Himalayas helped me paint a rea
