7 . 9 . 24

“The truth isn't often told, it is lived. Cory's journey as told through his unique and daring vision is as close to that truth as one can get. He lived it. I feel every stone under foot, every snow crystal, every piercing breath of cold air, struggling to breathe, as if I were right there with him. This book is as important as anything I've read in understanding the mind, the heart, and one's deepest fears as he invites us on the journey of overcoming adversity through human spirit and triumph.”

— Reinaldo Marcus Green, American director and film producer of One Love and King Richard.

EXCERPT

“I have a sense that the further I’m willing to go and the more I’m willing to risk, the less likely I am to sleep in the alleys and scream at trees. The decision to pursue my own edges by pushing the limits of my safety is not a conscious one and I don’t know when I make it. It will not just be climbing. It will be traversing ice caps and rivers in Africa and forgotten seas and I’ll lose sight of land and the world altogether. It will nearly kill me many times. This decision will precipitate heartbreak and selfishness and elation and success and shocking moments of joy and campfires and long nights of looking at nothing. The highs will be dizzying and the lows will be suicidal at times. I’ll collect many brothers and sisters and will hurt many friends when I withdraw. They’ll feel used. Some will forgive me, and others won’t, and many will lose faith in my friendship because I’m as unreliable as my moods. I’ll learn that there is little room for others when we’re consumed by ourselves. 

Many friends will die and I’ll wish that I’d been better to them. At times it will seem senseless. But I’ll ignore the warning of mortality. I’ll be criticized by many and adored by others. I won’t be the best and some people will hate me and think my success is undeserved. A piece of me will agree while another laps up the adoration of everyone who offers it. I’ll drink and fuck in celebration. I’ll do the same to escape the isolation of the choice I’m about to make. 

It’s irrational but I can see no other solution even though I can’t see now what I’m doing at all. I’m not only trying to unify myself but also to put as much distance between me and an inevitable madness clipping at my heels. I’m always scared but the fear also drives me, feeding the pieces of my brain that thrive in chaos. I won’t understand any of it until I break on a mountain nineteen years from now. The decision is an outright and unbridled expression of my unquiet mind. I’m choosing a life of polarity. In order to escape madness, I will live madly. I will risk my life in order to save it.”

PRAISE

  • "An extraordinary memoir of mental illness that reads like a thriller. The Color of Everything is filled with brilliance and bravado, breathless in its pace and breathtaking in its consequences. Cory's story is ​nothing less than a bullet train into the heart of darkness -- and back out again. Readers will be grateful for every one of Richards’ hard-won insights."

    — Amy Ellis Nutt, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Becoming Nicole.

  • “Rarely do we get an unflinching look behind the curtain of greatness and all its myths and hard truths. As high as Cory has climbed to summit Everest, he’s arguably gone down deeper into the depths of his own humanity. The Color Of Everything is written with such radical vulnerability and heart, you can’t help but see both the villain and hero in us all.”

    — Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites, The Lumineers.

  • “In The Color of Everything, Cory Richards, one of world’s most daring photojournalists, embarks on his ultimate adventure – he explores his danger-filled internal landscape, and does so with bravery, vulnerability, and extraordinary insight, all rendered in gripping, page-turning prose.”

    — Michael Finkel, New York Times best-selling author of The Art Thief and The Stranger in the Woods.

  • “Cory Richards tells this hard story with the same ferocious intensity, wit, and elegant keenness by which he has made stunning photographs and climbed killer mountains. The combination of risk and aplomb is amazing.”

    —David Quammen, New York Times best-selling author of The Tangled Tree.

  • "You might recall the look in his eyes from the selfie he snapped after climbing out of an avalanche in the Himalayas at 26,000 feet, or you might know him from his million Instagram followers of his iconic photographs, or you know him as a record-setting, world-class mountaineer. But you might not know that Cory is also a beautiful writer and thinker, with a complicated makeup and an abiding love for life. The Color Of Everything will make you laugh, will make you gasp, and is sure to make you happy in indescribable ways.”

    — Matthew Klamm, acclaimed author of Sam The Cat and Other Stories and Who Is Rich?

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Available 7.9.24