Rating: 
Summary: Backseat drivers take note: this is not the ride for you.
Review: If you're not prone to sanctimonious second guessing, you'll find Jon Krakauer's account one of the most haunting books you'll read this year. With an effective combination of reportorial objectivity and personal observation, Krakauer recounts his terrifying Everest experience with a soft-spoken equanimity few could muster after surviving such an ordeal.
Most refreshing and ultimately heartbreaking, however, is Krakauer's candor as he acknowledges that despite a year's reflection, he doesn't have any answers. Although Into Thin Air could be viewed as just another book about bad things happening to good people, Krakauer has successfully teased the genuine human story from his hellish nightmare: that sometimes good people do bad things.
Rating: 
Summary: Lunacy at 8,000 metres
Review: I.
Usually when you read a long-awaited tell-all book, you expect some relief: your questions
will be answered; innuendoes will be confirmed or dispelled; there'll be some satisfaction. Not so with Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, subtitled A Personal Account of the Everest
Disaster. Remember the magazine covers, the news stories, the in-depth articles about that
day in May last year when so many people died on the mountain after a sudden storm swept
in? Krakauer was there, and he tells us everything he can.
He tries his best to explain what would lead otherwise normal people to attempt the climb,
but he really can't. And since we don't understand why they're there in the first place, then we certainly can't begin to understand why, once they start experiencing all the physical and
mental horrors Krakauer describes, they don't just turn around and go home. It's not just
that we know the outcome -- nine dead, finger-pointing, recriminations -- and keep wanting to reach into the book, shake these people by the shoulders, and yell at them, "What, are
you, crazy? Get the hell out of there!" Whether the climbers were going to die or not, we
simply don't care enough about what happens to them because we can't understand why they
voluntarily put themselves in hell to begin with.
Hell for these climbers consisted of a lot of injuries, pain, and other suffering. By the time
Krakauer had finished the several-week acclimatization period at high altitude (not having even begun the real climb), he had lost 12 kg of muscle mass and picked up such a harsh
cough that the cartilage in his chest was torn and two ribs were separated. And by the time
he reached the summit, he hadn't slept in 57 hours or eaten anything except a bowl of soup
and a few sweets in three days. And while our protagonists were en route to the summit,
we heard about other tortures befalling these and other summiteers: fingers and noses lost
to frostbite; free falls off mountainsides or into crevasses; violent vomiting and diarrhea;
failed eyesight; flying rocks chipping pieces off a climber's skull; disorientation; body parts
freezing in winds of 70 degrees centigrade below zero; cerebral and pulmonary edema; and
just plain altitude sickness.
II.
Okay, so now we have these climbers: we couldn't understand why they were on the mountain in the first place, and then later, we couldn't understand why they stayed. But there's more.
Let's look now at some of the conventions, the "mores" or cultural behaviors the climbers
(Krakauer as well) exhibit during the climb. In this book the readers are introduced to the
world of the Everest climber, and I, for one, didn't like what I saw.
Consider this passage:
At 6:00 am, as they skirted a steep rock promontory called the First Step, [two members of a team] were taken aback to see one of the climbers ... lying in the snow, horribly frostbitten but still alive after a night without shelter or oxygen, moaning unintelligibly. *Not wanting to jeopardize their ascent by stopping to assist him, the ... team continued toward the summit.* (my emphasis added)
And periodically through the book we see climbers "coming upon the frozen bodies of their
teammates" as they go about their business.
Krakauer can't know that it is in describing these events that he loses his readers for good. That is because what comes across loud and clear, and what he neither attempts to explain
nor even seems to think is all that necessary to justify, is that these people cease to act like
human beings after a certain altitude.
Don't believe me? Take a look at how Krakauer's team treats two of their own missing team
members. The morning after the storm, they organized a search party and the Sherpas
"quickly found" the bodies -- or what they thought were bodies. A climber chipped a
three-inch shell of ice from the face of one, and discovered she was still breathing. "Both
her gloves were gone, and her hands appeared to be frozen solid. Her eyes were dilated. The skin on her face was the color of white porcelain." The other one, too, was alive: he
was "mumbling something," and was "as close to death as a person could be and still be
breathing." So did they rescue them, or do anything for them? Nope. On the recommendation of one
of the Sherpas, they decided to leave the two where they lay. They agreed that the two
would surely die before they could be carried to a point of rescue, and that any efforts spent
rescuing them would "needlessly jeopardize" the lives of the other climbers.
Now I wasn't there, and I don't want to second-guess the decisions of experienced Everest
climbers. But even accepting that a true rescue was impossible, don't you think they could
have brought the two stricken climbers to the camp (some twenty minutes away) to die in
dignity, surrounded by their teammates, in a tent and with whatever small comfort there
could be available?
No way. They left them there to die in the snow. And guess what. One of them lurched into camp that afternoon -- risen, practically, from the dead -- in a scene that raised the hairs on everyone's neck, including mine. Hand grotesquely frozen (later amputated); face frostbitten; near death, but he survived. (Don't you wonder how he feels about being left for dead? And don't you wonder what might have happened to the other one left to die alone in the snow?)
Krakauer says that when the resurrected climber shambled into camp, someone commented that it reminded him of something out of a low-budget horror movie. But we readers know
who the monsters are in this book, and it's certainly not this guy left for dead by his
teammates.
This book Into Thin Air is gripping, but thin indeed -- in logic and humanity. Read it and
see.
Rating:
Summary: This book deserves all the 10's it earned
Review: This is a page-turner that is distinguished by its clear, concise writing. Krakauer deserves special praise for objectivity. While its obvious he feels guilt in retrospect, he avoides pointing fingers and as much as possible. The process and the mountains are as dangerous as they are alluring, yet the human factor of wanting to conquer the almost impossible is inescapable
Rating:
Summary: Truth more unpredictable than fiction
Review: One of the best books I have read in years. A haunting, captivating tale that will stay with the reader long after the last page has been turned. This effect stems both from Krakauer's writing; his ability to give life to his characters, many of whom breathe no more; and from the fantastic story he has to tell. Books telling true tales are interesting simply because the reader knows every event really happened, but such books often lack the plot twists and unexpected surprises found in novels. Not so here. The end of Krakauer's story is as unpredictable as a bestselling thriller and contains acts of heroism to match. Amazing
Rating:
Summary: Why They Do It
Review: There are many chronicles of mountaineering exploits, and, as it should, this book tries to explain why a disaster happened. But the real achievement of the book lies elsewhere.
If you ever wondered why men and women continually attempt the highest and most dangerous peaks, you will never receive a better answer than this book contains. From the romantic to the ambitious, the drawn to the driven, the courageous to the merely deluded, they are all here. There are lots of reasons men and women attempt high peaks, and most of them have never been more thoroughly explored or completely revealed than in this riveting account of best-laid plans gone astray. The one minor weakness here is the author's guilt over his inability to save others who were lost. Though refreshingly honest, he confesses rather too often in these pages. Whatever it may do to help purge his guilt, it can only wear on the reader who has no reason to blame Krakauer as he blames himself
Rating:
Summary: A page turning true life horror story.
Review: I read this book over a month ago, and enjoyed it so much that I passed it on to my mom, dad, and various relations. All of them have confided to me that after reading this bizzare account of a mountaineering expedition gone horribly wrong, they did not sleep well. And who could? Krakauer has written a compelling story that stays with the reader long after the book has been closed.
His honest style holds nothing back. He admits his role in events that unfold with vivid, almost macabre, detail. If you thought frostbite was bad, wait until Krakauer describes dying of exposure.
The true horror of this story is the breakdown of morality among a group whose only defense against Everest was to work together. After reading this book, one realizes that few men conquer Everest, while it frequently kills the man.
Rating:
Summary: The most compelling book I've read in five years
Review: Awesome, compelling book that describes the events surrounding the 1996 Mount Everest climbing season where five people lost their lives.
The descriptions of the climb and the participants are vivid and leave one with a sense of intense curiousity about the motivations of all involved.
Some of the scense are absolutely mond-boggling. The author is completely non-judgemental in his description of the events, but the facts are compelling enough. My favorite pages are at the very beginning of the book where he shows a photograph of the summit with black dots. By each black dot is the legend "so and so's body found here, so and so last seen here, so and so left for dead here". Next comes page after page of names of climbers on the mountain.
For a week after reading this book I could not stop thinking about the major participants; their motivations, thoughts and feelings. Absolutely awesome.
Rating:
Summary: Well written and compelling journey into a voluntary horror
Review: I'm not a climber; can barely jog a mile. As a formerjournalist and editor I am in awe of the author's facile telling ofhis compelling story of man's quest to stand out, no matter what the cost. The book raises many questions about why but we certainly see the how. His angst about making a journalistic mistake is overwrought, and his soul searching over not being able to save other expedition members is humbling, but the reader can clearly see even a seasoned climber like the author was left helpless by this mountain,
Rating:
Summary: Great book, sad story
Review: This book brought back memories of a trip I took back in theearly seventies. I climbed Long's peak in Colorado. A foolhardyventure to be sure. The mountain was only 13,000 feet high and yet we climbed it with no gear, trudging up ice fields stepping in other people's foot prints. There were rock slides, thin air etc. We were foolish to be sure but the drive to get to the top was unstoppable. We just had to do it. Luckily we all survived. There have been a few deaths even on that mountain. I kept thinking of this as I read this book. I couldn't put it down. It left me breathless, as though I'd been climbing again.
Rating:
Summary: Simply a great book
Review: Krakauer is a master storyteller. This book puts the readerright on top of Everest along with Krakauer and his team. This iscompelling human drama at its best-- no familiarity with or interest in mountain climbing should be required to fully enjoy this fascinating tale.
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