MOUNTAIN PASSAGES
by Jeremy Bernstein
University of Nebraska Press 278 pages; $12.50
As anyone who reads the literature can attest, most mountain climbers cannot write. Fair enough; most writers cannot climb. Jeremy Bernstein is the exception to both rules. When he is at sea level, Bernstein is a physics professor at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. He also contributes lucid and entertaining pieces to The New Yorker on such abstruse subjects as particle physics and summit-level mathematics. In his less cerebral hours, Bernstein ascends rock surfaces, especially those surrounding the Chamonix Valley of France, and writes compelling pieces about the...