No one writes about mountaineering and its attendant hardships and victories more brilliantly than critically acclaimed author Jon Krakauer. In this collection of his finest work from such magazines as Outside and Smithsonian, he explores the subject from the unique and memorable perspective of one who has battled peaks like K2, Denali, Everest, and, of course, the Eiger. Always with a keen eye, an open heart, and a hunger for the ultimate experience, he gives us unerring portraits of the mountaineering experience. Yet Eiger Dreams is more about people than about rock and ice—people with that odd, sometimes maniacal obsession with mountain summits that sets them apart from other men and women. Here we meet Adrian the Romanian, determined to be the first of his countrymen to solo Denali; John Gill, climber not of great mountains but of house-sized boulders so difficult to surmount that even demanding alpine climbs seem easy; and many more compelling and colorful characters. In the most intimate piece, “The Devils Thumb,” Krakauer recounts his own near-fatal, ultimately triumphant struggle with solo-madness as he scales Alaska’s Devils Thumb. Eiger Dreams is stirring, vivid writing about one of the most compelling and dangerous of all human pursuits.
Quicklets: Your Reading Sidekick! ABOUT THE BOOK Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer is an anthology of articles published by various magazines during the mid-to-late 1980s. This collection consists of his earliest works, predating the books that launched him to the top of the bestseller list: Into The Wild (1996), and Into Thin Air (1997) Krakauer does an admirable job of addressing the central issues so even the casual hiker can appreciate his passion, as climbing is a sport that can be hard to appreciate without spending a good deal of time hanging around climbers. Krakauer skillfully avoids getting too wrapped up in technical terms and esoteric knowledge; his narrative voice is well-developed. He has an elegant writing style that carries the reader like a raft floating along a deep river. A skilled wordsmith, he likes long and sometimes complex sentences yet he puts them together so skillfully you rarely lose the point. What makes the stories so accessible to climbers and non-climbers alike is Krakauers ability to place the human element at the front and center of each tale. MEET THE AUTHOR Anita Tsuchiya is el presidente y peon of Sabaku, Inc., a marketing services company that provides writing, editing, research, analysis and consulting for a diverse assortment of clientele. The loves of her life are split into two seasons: during the fall/winter she pursues a degree in Japanese language, and spends spring/summer joyfully immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of minor league baseball. A retired speed-freak and super-jock, her current life is moderately active. She grew up in the Bay Area of California, and her almae matres include San Leandro High and U.C. Davis. In fact, she remembers what San Jose looked like before Silicon Valley. Now happily settled in Salt Lake City, Utah, she shares her home with a pair of mixed-mutt bundles of canine goodness named Molly and Linus. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Krakauers strength as a writer lies in his ability to personalize the many characters who populate the sport of climbing. He gives us folks we can relate to on a human scale even if we dont quite understand their odd fixation with danger. Thanks to his skillful portraiture, it doesnt take long to start wondering: whatever happened to those outrageous Burgess twins? Has Richard Fisher come out of hiding from the gullies of Arizona? Did Adrian the Romanian finally make it to the top of Mt. McKinley, and more importantly, did he make it back down in one piece? The Burgess boys managed to survive their youthful indulgences. They even wrote a book about their adventures, climbing and otherwise. And theyve lost none of their cheekiness, as they point out in the acknowledgement, We especially thank those who held regular jobs so that civilization, as we know it, didnt fall apart while we went climbing. Buy a copy to keep reading! CHAPTER OUTLINE Quicklet On Jon Krakauer’s Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains + About the Book + About Jon Krakauer Article Summaries + Eiger Dreams + Gill + Valdez Ice + On Being Tentbound + ...and much more
ABOUT THE BOOK When I first read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster, I was enthralled and amazed. The story he tells about a doomed Mt. Everest expedition in 1996 is both thrilling and terrifying, and it also has a lot to say about the problems with the commercialization of adventure expeditions on the highest mountain in the world. It’s a well-researched and extraordinarily well-written first-hand account of the tragic expedition, and Krakauer’s excellent storytelling makes for gripping reading. Not only was he a member of this expedition, but he knows how to tell a story - how to introduce characters, build drama, and describe situations. He also has a gift for researching and writing history. When I first read Into Thin Air, I was prompted to read everything I could get my hands on about Mt. Everest. You could spend several years reading through this material, since there have been many books published about Mt. Everest, including several about this same disaster. Reading as many as you can will throw you into a fascinating, complex, and sometimes contradictory world of adventurers, scientists, business people, Tibetan and Nepalese guides, socialites, swindlers, politicians, artists, dreamers, and many other characters - as well as the frigid and challenging character of the mountain itself. Whether this is your first or fiftieth foray into the literature of Mt. Everest, you won’t be disappointed by Into Thin Air, and it will certainly draw you into its subzero spell. MEET THE AUTHOR professional writer Vivian Wagner has wide-ranging interests, from technology and business to music and motorcycles. She writes features regularly for ECT News Network, and her work has also appeared in American Profile, Entrepreneur, Bluegrass Unlimited, and many other publications. She is also the author of Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel 2010). For more about her, visit her website at www.vivianwagner.net. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Into Thin Air (1997) began as a 1996 article for Outside Magazine. Krakauer wanted to develop the story more fully, however, and thus was the book was born. He’d originally been assigned to examine the commercialization of Mt. Everest for the Outside article. That ended up being the focus of the story after all, but with a much more tragic outcome than he or his editors could have imagined. For the article and subsequent book, Krakauer joined an expedition led by Rob Hall’s Adventure Consultants. During that season, a number of other expeditions were also on the mountain along with Krakauer and Hall, including Scott Fischer’s Mountain Madness. Both Hall and Fischer were killed in the May 1996 disaster, along with six other climbers. Since its publication, Into Thin Air has been at the center of controversy surrounding Krakauer’s account of events, particularly in regards to questions about who was responsible for tragic errors made on the mountain. Much of the initial criticism of the book came from the Russian climbing guide Anatoli Boukreev, who disputed Krakauer’s depiction of him as neglecting his mountain guide duties. In response to Krakauer’s book, Boukreev published his own account of the tragedy, co-authored by G. Weston DeWalt, called The Climb (1997). In postscript to a later edition of Into Thin Air, Krakauer took up this debate and defended his account of the tragedy against Boukreev’s criticism. Buy a copy to keep reading!
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer | Summary & Analysis Preview: Into Thin Air was published in 1997 by journalist and outdoorsman Jon Krakauer. The book focuses on the events surrounding the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, of which the author was a survivor. In 1996, New Zealander mountaineering expert Robert Hall led a commercial expedition to climb the mountain. Krakauer joined this expedition while on assignment for Outside magazine. That same climbing season, American, Norwegian, South African, and Taiwanese expeditions also attempted to climb Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak. On May 10, 1996, a rogue storm hit Mount Everest as the members of several climbing expeditions descended from the summit. By the end of May 11, eight people were dead. It was the deadliest single incident in the mountain’s history up to that time… PLEASE NOTE: This is summary and analysis of the book and NOT the original book. Inside this Instaread Summary of Into Thin Air: Overview of the book Important People Key Takeaways Analysis of Key Takeaways About the Author With Instaread, you can get the key takeaways, summary and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.
ABOUT THE BOOK Like so many others, I remember reading Greg Mortenson’s revolutionary Three Cups of Tea for a college class. The book was an instant hit, both in the media and in my own mind. No one could resist its tale of compassion, adventure, and triumph, set in the exotic Far-Middle East but offering an uplifting tale in sharp contrast to news about war and conflict. Greg Mortenson himself appealed to me greatly. Who could not like a mountain-climbing humanitarian who escaped near-death to fall in love, all while creating a series of schools throughout impoverished Afghanistan and Pakistan? It was movie magic... And then it really was movie magic. Three Cups of Deceit pulled back the veil on Three Cups of Tea, revealing the lies, fabrications, and dishonesty Mortenson appears to have used when creating his adventure tale. What Three Cups of Deceit offers is a mixture of both argument and evidence. It does not come across as a separate story, but as a painful analysis of Tea and the sequel Stones into Schools. MEET THE AUTHOR Tyler Lacoma writes on business, environmental, and fitness topics, but squeezes in some time for fiction, too. He graduated from George Fox University and lives in beautiful Oregon, where he fills spaces between writing with outdoor fun, loud music, and time with family and friends. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK The text goes on to reveal how such actions damaged the causes the CAI has tried to advance and how the organization is not as successful as Mortenson would like its supporters to believe. Krakauer also takes time to analyze Mortenson’s own mistakes, financial sloppiness, and possible motives for fictionalizing what could have been an honest account of conditions in the Himalayas. The reason, according to Deceit, is only, “To inflate the myth of Greg Mortenson.” Krakauer divides his text into three different sections, eschewing chapters for a more organic flow. At less than 80 pages long, the bulk of the book does not require frequent headings to stay readable. The first section section, titled The Creation Myth, examines the account Greg Mortenson gives in Three Cups of Tea when he first came across Haji Ali and the village of Korphe, where he was inspired to build the first school. Krakauer frequently moves back and forth between his own exposition and quotes from Tea and other pieces written by or about Mortenson to highlight the differences in fact... Buy a copy to keep reading!
Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest, when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended in the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history. In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall. Despite the expertise of Hall and the other leaders, by the end of summit day, eight people were dead. Krakauer's book is at once the story of the ill-fated adventure and an analysis of the factors leading up to its tragic end. Written within months of the events it chronicles, Into Thin Air clearly evokes the majestic Everest landscape. As the journey up the mountain progresses, Krakauer puts it in context by recalling the triumphs and perils of other Everest trips throughout history. The author's own anguish over what happened on the mountain is palpable as he leads readers to ponder timeless questions.One of the inspirations for the major motion picture Everest, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Keira Knightley.'Into Thin Air ranks among the great adventure books of all time.' - Wall Street Journal'A harrowing tale of the perils of high-altitude climbing, a story of bad luck and worse judgment and of heartbreaking heroism.' - People
Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild examines the true story of Chris McCandless, a young man who walked deep into the Alaskan wilderness and whose SOS note and emaciated corpse were found four months later. In April 1992, Chris McCandless set off alone into the Alaskan wild. He had given his savings to charity, abandoned his car and his possessions, and burnt the money in his wallet, determined to live a life of independence. Just four months later, Chris was found dead. An SOS note was taped to his makeshift home, an abandoned bus. In piecing together the final travels of this extraordinary young man's life, Jon Krakauer writes about the heart of the wilderness, its terribly beauty and its relentless harshness. Into the Wild is a modern classic of travel writing, and a riveting exploration of what drives some of us to risk more than we can afford to lose. From the author of Under the Banner of Heaven and Into Thin Air. A film adaptation of Into the Wild was directed by Sean Penn and starred Emile Hirsch and Kristen Stewart. 'It may be nonfiction, but Into the Wild is a mystery of the highest order.' - Entertainment Weekly
When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10,1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin the perilous descent from 29,028 feet (roughly the cruising altitude of an Airbus jetliner), twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly to the top, unaware that the sky had begun to roil with clouds... Into Thin Air is the definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed Outside journalist and author of the bestselling Into the Wild. Taking the reader step by step from Katmandu to the mountain's deadly pinnacle, Krakauer has his readers shaking on the edge of their seat. Beyond the terrors of this account, however, he also peers deeply into the myth of the world's tallest mountain. What is is about Everest that has compelled so many poeple--including himself--to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense? Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer's eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement. From the Paperback edition.
