Into Thin Air

Biography and memoir

Print length: 332 pagesAnchor Books/Doubleday, 1999

Description

Jon Krakauer arrives at Mount Everest as an Outside magazine journalist assigned to examine the commercialization of high-altitude climbing, but the expedition also revives his own long-standing desire to reach the summit. He joins a commercial team led by guide Rob Hall as clients, guides, and rival operators converge on the mountain. During the 1996 summit push, accumulated delays, competition, physical exhaustion, and deteriorating conditions turn an already dangerous ascent into disaster. Combining eyewitness memoir with investigative reconstruction, Krakauer scrutinizes the decisions and pressures that weakened established safety practices while confronting the limits of his own perception. The result is an account of ambition, responsibility, survival, and Everest’s enduring power over people willing to risk everything to stand on its summit.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Descriptive · Direct · Journalistic

Pace

Variable

Tone

Earnest · Reflective · Tense · Unsettling

Structure

Chronological nonfiction

Focus

Character · Ideas · Information

Emotional intensity

5 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

AmbitionGuiltMoralityMortalityObsessionSurvival

About Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer is an American writer, journalist, and mountaineer whose narrative nonfiction combines investigative reporting with close attention to people operating under pressure. His subjects range from wilderness and high-altitude climbing to religious violence, war, and failures of the justice system. He often builds a larger institutional or cultural inquiry around an intensely examined life or case. Into the Wild reconstructs Chris McCandless’s journey by retracing his route and investigating his choices, while Into Thin Air draws on Krakauer’s firsthand experience of the disastrous 1996 Everest expedition. For Where Men Win Glory, he used journals, letters, interviews, conversations with fellow soldiers, and research in Afghanistan to examine Pat Tillman’s story. Under the Banner of Heaven places a double murder within the history and contested traditions of Mormonism, and Missoula follows sexual-assault cases through police, university, prosecutorial, and court processes. Krakauer’s work moves between intimate narrative and documented systems, setting personal conviction, ambition, and vulnerability against the institutions and communities that shape their consequences.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday
Language: English
ISBN: 9780385494786

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