Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful book, I couldn't put it down
Review: I recently read "Into Thin Air." I thought it was a wonderful book. Krakauer did a great job in taking the romance out of mountaineering and showing the harsh reality of the sport. It was also interesting to see the history of Everest and the history of its commercialization. I must agree though with the people who say this was not a tragedy. This morning I heard about the Amtrak train that derailed in Illinois. As of this morning five people are known dead and twenty are missing. These people were just going to New Orleans, not seeking any kind of media attention. To me that's a tragedy. On Everest the real tragedies that year were the famliles left behind. I wonder how Scott Fischer's two children and Rob Hall's unborn child are doing now. To me those left behind are the real victims.
Rating: 
Summary: Quite interesting; very detailed
Review: Into thin air was just one of those books that you have a hard time putting down at night. Although, I hate to critisize; the book,(for me) did have alot of detail about the events leading up to the actual climb of Everest. This I found to be long but, I also found it to be very helpfull when the summit attempt was described. All in all it was good-great book that openend my eyes to other great writers and other great books about the AMAZING Mount Everest.
Rating:
Summary: Don't miss out of this one!
Review: Climbing up Everest....I thought it would be the slowest book ever but I was so wrong! From the minute I started it I couldn't put it down. It was captivating, exciting....It brought out every emotion; exilerance, sadness, fear, you find yourself urging them to keep moving or turn around even though you know how it ends. This book was amazing!
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down. It was beutifully written
Review: Into Thin Air was an exquisitly detailed book of man against the elements. It was Jon's best book yet. Into thin air was about a team of mountain climbers going for the largest climb of their lives. As you read the suspence builds to an unbelievable point, you never know what will happen next. Diffinetly his best book yet.
Rating: 
Summary: $6.39...Into Thin Air!
Review: For all the hype, I couldn't for the life of me figure out why this book is so highly rated. This book is a prime example of what happens when you take a magazine "journalist" and give him a contract to write a book. This thing has so many footnotes (some of which are half the page!) that the experience becomes incredibly distracting. If he felt compelled to do half-page footnotes, why not just do a #@!& side-bar, like in a MAGAZINE! See the Imax movie called Everest...and save yourself from burning a $6 hole in your pocket.
Rating:
Summary: you'll never want to put this book down
Review: If you read, "Into the Wild", or like exciting books; look no further. Krakaeur writes flawlessly in this book. I loved it, and you probably will too. If you have any common sense, you will buy this book, read it, and like it.
Rating: 
Summary: Do yourself a favor and do not buy this book.
Review: If you are planning to buy this book, try this first: Take a hammer and whack yourself in the head a couple of times. You will experience the same amount of pleasure and save yourself $6 in the process. I thought this was going to be a book about an expedition to climb Mt. Everest. However, I now see that the title of the book (e.g., Into Thin Air) describes a journey into the mind of the Author. This book is really bad. The Author should have paid a visit to Dr. Laura, or should have at least watched a couple of "Fraiser" re-runs, prior to writing this book. He really needed to work past his feelings of inadequacy prior to attempting this book. I struggled through 175 pages before I just could not stomach another page of the authors' opinionated, arrogant tirade. An excerpt from P.178 is an example of the typical dialog up to this point: "My first impression of Beck had not been favorable: a back-slapping Dallas pathologist with less-than-mediocre mountaineering skills, at first blush he came across as a rich Republican blowhard looking to buy the summit of Everest for his trophy case. Yet the better I got to know him, the more he ERNED my respect. Even though his inflexible new boots had chewed his feet into hamburger......And what I initially took to be arrogance was looking more and more like exuberance. The man seemed to bear no ill will toward anybody in the world (Hillary Clinton notwithstanding. Beck's cheer and limitless optimism were so winning that, IN SPITE OF MYSELF, I grew to like him a lot." Ugh! My stomach is beginning to turn again. Anyone who has ever worked in a large Corporation can recognize this backbiting behavior. The authors arrogance is only exceeded by hit inability to tell an interesting story. The authors' inability to focus and tendency to ramble on about unimportant minutia are his real gifts. I only wish I could re-claim the few hours of my life I spent wading through this terrible book. Better yet, maybe a class action law suit can be started to recover damages relating to the pain and suffering inflicted by the Author on the readers of this book. If you want to read a really good book (in my humble opinion), read "The Perfect Storm".
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read for Everyone
Review: This is one of the best books I've ever read. You don't have to be a climber to love this book. It's got something for everyone: Detailed facts about the climb, the history of the mountain, the Sherpas, the personalities of the climbers and the expedition programs, and of course: the G (that's the gossip). This is one of those books you can not put down.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome story of one of this decade's biggest tragedies.....
Review: I first read this book last summer and recently read it again. I was surprised by how many of its subtleties I missed the first time! I have been to the Himalayas, the Annapurnas and Kathmandu. Krakauer's book *Into Thin Air* is an accurate description of what it is really like over there. I did not climb in the Everest region, but I know from stories our Sherpas told who had been there that it is definitely not for people with little mountaineering expertise. Just being rich doesn't increase the rate of survival! Even the experts can fail! Krakauer has been criticized for his work on this book, but I truly enjoyed reading it and it was gut-wrenching at times, to say the least. There are books written by others who were associated with that particular climb and they each lend a slightly different slant. But Krakauer does write this book in a style that even people who aren't expert mountain climbers can understand and appreciate.
Rating:
Summary: What an incredible read.
Review: i've read 'into thin air' twice, and like any good book, much more is to be gleaned the second time. exhaustively researched, this work of jon krakauer speaks with authority from the very beginning while at the same time getting the reader emotionally involved. krakauer has been criticized by some for seeking profit in the wake of this tragedy and by others for 'contributing' to the debacle on everest. let us remember that, although several factors contributed to those climbers' demise that day in 1996, it was ultimately the machismo of the guides that was responsible. i would like to thank jon krakauer for this glimpse of what high altitude mountaineering is really like.
| 
