Stone Crusade: A Historical Guide to Bouldering in America is a classic that establishes the historical richness of bouldering’s neglected evolution and should make this activity mainstream. It is full of telling anecdotes and crisply written descriptions of prime boulders and leading pesonalities, present or past, plus excellent access data to every location coast-to-coast.
The book unveils the soul of American bouldering. John Sherman traces the history, profiles the participants, shows the geographic and geologic diversity of the nation's boulderfields, and shares stories formerly told only at the rocks and in the taverns. The sport of bouldering compresses the action, the fear, the pain, the glory, and the sublimity of climbing into several intense moves. As the author notes, "Bouldering is the distilled essence of climbing, the poetry of mountaineering."