Into Thin Air

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Summary: Tragedy of May 11.
Review: The book "Into Thin Air" was a story of a man and a dream. This man was an experienced climber and this dream was to reach the summit of one of the tallest mountains on the earth. This book entails all the events leading up the the tragedy of May 11 and of the people involved. I personally did not like the book as much as I though I would because there is a lot of detail and history throughout the entire book. I was not very interested in the story by the time I reached the middle of the book.

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Summary: Great read...
Review: Edge of your seat true life thriller! Outstanding account of Everest! Very well written.

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Summary: At the Mercy of the Mountain
Review: At 25,000 feet, you are only a fraction of yourself. Starved of oxygen, brain cells begin to die; and you struggle to perform the most simple tasks. Irrespective how strong your resolve, you are at the mercy of the mountain. Experienced professional climbers and sherpas both will suddenly lose bodily function and begin to die -- or not. They can just as easily "conquer" the peak and win glory. In either case, it's staking your life on a roll of the dice.

In the climbing season of 1996, a large number of climbing parties that included numerous non-professionals attempted Everest, and a dozen of them were left in crevasses, under avalanches, or under crude cairns put up by later expeditions. For several years, these expeditions were a source of controversy, fueled by a book attacking Krakauer and by a famous New Yorker article. People, being people, always want someone to blame.

I had heard of INTO THIN AIR long before I read it and knew of the controversies. Nothing prepared me, however, for Krakauer's vivid recounting of the events of 1996. Although it gets confusing cutting back and forth between 16 expeditions on the mountain, the central fact of the difficulties faced by the climbers and by the apparently random fates that befell them comes across clearly.

At one point, Krakauer quotes Conrad's LORD JIM:

"There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention -- that indefinable something that forces it upon the mind and heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and fear, the pain of his fatigue and the longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all...."

So when I read all the morning-after pundits attempt to recast the events so that one person or another is to blame, all I can conclude is that anyone who attempts Everest has placed his life in pawn -- regardless how experienced he or she is, how strong, how well equipped, how otherwise lucky. Time and chance happen to all, and on the mountain, they happen with a vengeance.

This is superlative reading, and I recommend it to all without qualification.

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Summary: Harrowing
Review: There are few subjects of which I have utterly no interest. Before I read this book, mountain climbing was one of them. I don't know how he did it, but Jon Krakauer's account of the 1996 season on Mount Everest has a gut wrenching immediacy that I have seldom, if ever, encountered. This book was all I thought about during the time I read it, and for quite some time afterwards. This has to be one of the all time greatest true adventure stories ever written. Just read it.

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Summary: Tragedy at the Top of the World
Review: This first-hand story of the Everest tragedy of May 10, 1996 is riveting and suspenseful, nerve wracking and mesmerizing in its detail and honesty. Jon Krakauer, a writer and avid mountain-climber was sponsored by Outside magazine to join an Everest expedition and write an article. He joins a team lead by Rob Hall, who is very experienced, organized and professional in his approach to the business of guiding climbers to the top of Everest. Although written in the first-hand perspective, the central character in the book is not Jon, but rather the mountain itself, looming in the background, taunting and teasing the climbers, some of whom will abandon their quest just a few hundred yards short of the summit.

One of the most interesting trends revealed by the book is the commercialization of Mt. Everest. The government of Nepal sells permits to climb the mountain at $10,000 per person. The guides charge up to $65,000 per person and provide all equipment, supplies, guides and Sherpas to do the heavy lifting. All the customer has to do is walk up the mountain. The climbers range from dedicated athletes to rich thrill seekers. Jon was concerned about the inexperience of many of the climbers, and rightly so, because some of them perished on that fateful day.

The book describes in fascinating detail the preparations for the final summit as the group moves from Katmandu to Base Camp, then on to Camps One, Two, Three and Four. The process of acclimatization to the altitude and thin air takes 4-6 weeks to accomplish, and the skillful writing allows you to fully experience and understand the surroundings and fellow climbers as we accompany the group step by step to the summit at 29,028 ft.

The book is also replete with historical detail of past climbers, both successful and unsuccessful, and plenty of information about Nepal and the unique Sherpas. But this is all background information leading up to the long-awaited final assault that was scheduled for May 10th, a day on which the most favorable weather conditions were expected. The day was fraught with problems, from the late start, to traffic jams caused by 33 hikers attempting the summit on the same day, uninstalled ropes at the highest elevations, dead radio batteries, competition between guide groups, lack of cooperation between Sherpas, misplaced oxygen canisters and the omnipresent exhaustion caused by altitude-induced hypoxia.

Climbing Everest is a feat of such magnitude that few of us armchair adventurers can imagine the motivation, drive and willpower required to reach this goal; however, thanks to the skillful writing of Jon Krakauer we can experience vicariously some of the terror, pain, exhaustion, fear, anger, horror, exhilaration and sense of awe at attempting to conquer the inimitable Mt. Everest.

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Summary: Top o' the Heap.
Review: I'm a couch potato. I freely admit this. I wouldn't climb a mountain in a million years--heck, I won't even strap long narrow boards on my feet and slide down snow on a gentle slope, and I don't necessarily admire the grit and guts of those who do like to do these sorts of things. To each his own.

I have to say, though, that Krakauer has written a book that is about the best, in *any* genre, that I have ever read. The book is unputdownable. The horrific sense of immediacy, the vividness of being *there*, on that mountain, during the worst possible time one *could* be on it, simply grabs one by the throat and won't let go. Krakauer's account of a terrible tragedy and his involvement and loss is so personal it is almost painful at times.

I understand that others have taken issue with its accuracy and that some of the details are disputed. If the terrible conditions, altitude-sickness, and oxygen-starvation and its resulting psychosis are true, I'm not sure how anyone's personal account can be taken as more "accurate" than anyone else's, but what do I know. Just that this is a *great* and unforgettable book, and I do know books.

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Summary: Read it now!
Review: This is the book that launched my interest in the sub-genre of harsh-climate expeditioning. Tremendously impactful and memorable. If you are even faintly interested in this type of story, read this one.

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Summary: Into Thin Air: The Masterpiece About The Disaster
Review: Into Thin Air, the story of standing on top of the world and the tragedy of the 1996 climbing season. I have never read a book by Jon Krakauer up until now; to tell you the truth I have not read many books at all, except for those assigned to me in class. At first, a book about a personal experience of Everest did not seem too appealing to me, until I opened the cover and read the first pages.

It is slow for the first part of the book, which led me away from getting into it at first. As I read further into the book, the plot unfolded even more and the setting grew more tense. Krakauer made my few hours of reading seem more like a half hour; something I would never have believed any author could do.
Krakauer gives a brief history of Mt. Everest in a couple of the beginning chapters. This part of the book feels meticulously slow and really does not set up any plot in the book. It just gives you an idea of who has climbed Everest, and how they did it. This particular part of the book, however, gives you insight on what motivated him to be a climber. Then the book gets started.

Of all of the adventure/survival books I have read-of which you can count on one hand-this book was certainly the best of them all. Though the book was slow to begin with, as you read further and further into the book, you will not be able to put it down. He is a gifted writer, who knows how to use strong vocabulary to depict a scene of just about anything. Whether it is chaos, pain, or happiness, he knows how to portray it, and he gives an excellent example of this in his book, Into Thin Air.

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Summary: Tragic Adventure
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed reading Mr. Krakauer's account of his Mount Everest expedition. His imagerery was so vivid it was like you were climbing right there next to him.

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Summary: A Gripping High Altitude Adventure
Review: The author has excelled in describing this climatic story that forces the reader to contemplate his own actions given those set of circumstances. The reader is given, almost unknowingly, a brief education in the art and science of mountain climbing which minimizes the difficulty interpreting technical climbing terminology. The book excites the reader into anticipating what each subsequent chapter will reveal. After completing the book I reflected upon the seriousness of the events and the climbers decisions as the events unfolded. I found myself very hesitant to cast judgement upon the climbers or the author for their decisions having not been under both the mental and physical anguish they were experiencing at the time. If this book is enjoyed by the reader than "The Perfect Storm" should be given serious consideration.