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Summary: Captivating and Chilling Account
Review: "Into Thin Air" is an extraordinary account of an unusual expedition gone awry. Jon Krakauer is able to pull the reader into this bleak world of machismo and ultimately survival-of-the-fittest where 90% of the world population would NEVER dare to go.
I'm not normally a reader of this genre of literature, but I was intrigued by the topic since I know for a fact that I'll never attempt such a feat. I thought it was an interesting way to vicariously experience life in it's most primitive state. I still do not understand WHY a person would subject him/herself to the perilous conditions of Everest, however, and perhaps that is part of the intrigue that surrounds the book.
My only criticism of the work is that I would have liked to have had a glossary of climbing terms to rely on. Although Mr. Krakauer initially wrote his account for "Outside" magazine which is directed at those who are more familiar with the "lingo" of mountaineering, he should understand that he has thrust himself into the general reading public with his more in depth account of "Into Thin Air." Perhaps later printings can include such an appendix.
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Summary: A gripping read
Review: The story moves forward relentlessly. Like the author in his efforts to reach the summit, you will keep reading not because you want to, but because you have to
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Summary: Entertaining but short
Review: A very entertaining novel but at 250 pages, only takes a weekend to read. Is it just me or is anyone else out there getting tired of spending $20+ for 250 page efforts. It makes you appreciate Clancy, Michener and King who will at least give you a novel that can keep you entertained for weeks at a time
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Summary: I'm waiting for the book from Beck Weathers
Review: This book was absolutely incredible. It amazes me that people who were in no way involved with this disaster have been placing blame on certain individuals on Everest. Unless they were there (or atleast get some insight from the book) they will never understand how unimaginely horrible this was. People go into survival mode, they are suffering from lack of oxygen to the brain, they're in pain and desperate.
The person in this book who amazed me the most was Beck Weathers. I would love to hear his story. I wonder how he survived the conditions and how it felt to be left to die (twice).
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Summary: Just Read The Book!!
Review: Really, from all the feedback of the people that have read it, I gather that whatever I am going to say is pretty redundant. It is not about how well the author writes, not about how he is selfishly trying to purge himself of the haunting guilt, not about the stupidity or irrational behavior up in the mountains, not even about selfishness, humanity, understanding or justification...
It is about reality, what perhaps had or will happen in those altitudes. It's REAL and the chilling realization that these things that we are so detached from are actually happening jerk us back to reality so violently. It is hard to comprehend what had happened and why people are so foolish to let that happen, because we are not there to judge nor do we have the right to. I can only say that the rawness, the truth chills me more than any other horror novels I had read. Because I know that out there, bodies are hanging in the crevasses, corpses buried in snow and perhaps at this very moment, a breathe is snuffed out from a helpless climber.
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Summary: Haunting, riveting, engrossing; well-written and easily read
Review: Into Thin Air is a fantastic, non-fiction tale of one of the worst disasters on Mt. Everest in recent history. The author brilliantly describes the brutal conditions of the mind and body in the rarified air above 26,000 feet. The book is both factual and emotional, and the author took no liberties regarding a "plot", nor did he inject any ficticious story in an attempt to make it more interesting. This book is a collection of the facts surrounding the disaster on Everest in 1996, assembled into a haunting, riveting, edge-of-your-seat tale
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Summary: A Thin Perspective
Review: In the introduction of Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer seeks a "...raw, ruthless honesty... The result is raw, like frostbitten skin. The honesty is an accusing finger - pointing at the organizers, guides and Sherpas. The result is a visual and chilling drama that is thin on perspective.
Krakauer's builds and maintains tension on a widely reported story. Everest's summit pulls us up the mountain. Colorful characters emerge from his team, and from the wild array of other masochists - playing a wealthy person's 'Russian roulette' in a treachorous, oxygen-starved environment.
The focal point is not the peaks or faux paux's, but the author, who is searching for his soul in 293 page attempt at peace. Time is the oxygen cannister he seeks. Time sorts out his own mistakes on a fateful day of triumph and tragedy. Time brings perspective.
This story and its victims, including the author, scream for a sequel in a couple years. Without it, this best seller is like a summer action movie - exciting, but very thin on any legacy for literal or figurative climers.
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Summary: Icy-cold fingers of life and death on Everest
Review: _Into Thin Air_ might be read as an indictment of the commercialization of Everest, an unburdening for the author (who feels he may have contributed to the pain of an Everest victim's family, if not the man's death, by his own hypoxia-induced misconception), or a paeon to the mountain as a godlike force that humanity would do well to respect. It is all of those, but mostly a tragedy in the classical sense: each climber has a tragic flaw. For several, it costs them their lives. But Krakauer's account makes it clear that even for those, like himself, who survived intact, did not come away unscathed by the experience.
The author's writing is as cool and sharp as the ice fall he clambers over, risking sure death with a single misstep. Reading this book during a hot spell in which the temperature never went below the mid-90s, I still caught myself reaching for a blanket as Krakauer shared the sensations of bone-deep cold and brutal winds that snatch what little oxygen there is from a climber's lungs.
Why would a human being do this? Driven by a desire for peril and adventure, filling some inner emptiness, or seeking to be members of a more exclusive club than one's social peers: Krakauer explores what drives each of the climbers. Ultimately, whatever the force, it costs several of the lively faces on the back-cover photo their lives. Others, who come away with their lives, it costs limbs. Still others, including Krakauer, leave behind a piece of their souls.
This is one of the most compelling tales I have read in many years, and one that I expect will stand the test of time.
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Summary: Full of (sometimes) raw emotion of the events at Everest
Review: This book can be compared to another written about an earlier British Everest expidition that also ended in tragedy for 2 of its members. While "Everest: The Unclimbed Face" disected the events in a cool, calm demeanor, "Into Thin Air" poured out everything that Jon Krakauer was feeling as part of the team making the ascent. I found myself being carried along with Jon's narrative. His narrative style can make you feel like you are inside of him as he made his physical and psychological journey up the face of Everest. This is something that I was not able to get into with "Unclimbed Face".
I STRONGLY recommend this book to anyone! I also had the pleasure of meeting Jon at a book signing and the man does deserve all of the acclaim that he's long overdue for!
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Summary: Into Thin Air is a microcosm of American society in the 90s.
Review: For me the real "pull" of this fascinating book is that the society on top the mountain is a microcosm of our Fin de Millenium society. The parallels are striking, now that the DOW is hovering at the 8,000 meter mark--the spectacle of entrepreneurial Darwinism run amoc, the tension of barely hidden class animosities, the ambivalence of the press as both the informer of social trends and the purveyor of sensationalism, the underlying sense of foreboding for what lies ahead. And above all, the deep sense of loneliness that comes from living in a society where there are no real relationships, only the mutual parasitism of people loosely united, but with each on their own private quest, fueled by their own personal motives. I really doubt that Krakauer had any of this in mind when he wrote the book--he must have been too preoccupied with just getting the events down on paper and out of his head. But his choice of what he selected and the way that he presented it must have been informed by his own views on society at large. Certainly, the degree to which this story resonates with flatlanders such as myself can only be because it taps into something deeper--at once more immediate and more fundamental.
The tone of relentless progress toward disaster reminds me of two other works--"The Long Walk" (by Richard Bachman, aka Steven King), and "The Man Who Would Be King (honest, I just saw the pun, as I typed it!), with Krakauer as "poor ol' Peachy , what never done no one no harm", who crawls back on his hands and knees to tell us this terrible tale.
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