Into the Wild

by Jon Krakauer

Book Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. This is the unforgettable story of how Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die.

It may be nonfiction, but Into the Wild is a mystery of the highest order. --Entertainment Weekly

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385486804
• ISBN13: 9780385486804
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A beautiful and respectful retelling of the tragic adventures of Christopher McCandless

This book is absolutely amazing!!! It perfectly tells the harrowing tale of Christopher McCandless while offering deep respect and personal insight from the mind of Jon Krakauer. It offers deep life lessons while also telling a deeply emotional and real narrative. Chris' story needed to be told in this fashion, and this book needed to be made.

Good book-controversial subject

Agree- well written. However, I find this somewhat romanticising a person who obviously was deeply troubled. The results are very predictable with this type of behaviour. I did enjoy the read and do recommend it.

Great read!

Definitely recommend reading this piece, great book and enjoyed the whole thing. not one-sided either.

An exchange of realities, one in community another in the wilderness.

The story for anyone rebelling the current world and wishing to remove one's self from it.

A Must Read Book!

I very much enjoyed reading this book, I could barely put it down! this was my first book by Jon Krakauer and it probably won't be my last. I am sure Christopher McCandless would be very pleased with this book written about him. To anyone reading this who hasn't bought the book. Buy it, you won't be disappointed!

my favorite book of all time

it's the only book I've ever read that I've felt completely connected to. there are other people out there like me, who wander aimlessly

Good book!

I have heard about this story for years, and finally decided to read it. Sad and very amazing story.

Seemed like a planned suicide

Several people have recommended this book to me, but a few threw in the caveat "But you probably won't get it." Well, I didn't get it. The writing is superb; the author is a very likable young man with a wanderlust spirit. However, he makes a HUGE misstep and travel up to Alaska to forge the winter in an abandoned bus. No spoiler here: but this particular lark he went on was fatal. And that's a shame, because he had enormous potential is many areas of his life and several folks tried to throw him a life-line and he rejected them. I found this book to be depressing overall; I often do when people in their prime throw it away.

My girlfriend’s favorite book

I liked that Krakauer told the story of Chris through what materials he was given. I didn’t not like how most of the book was focused on other people’s journeys. I definitely recommend Carine McCandless’s “The Wild Truth,” as she goes into depths of their childhoods and tells the readers the accurate truth of Chris’s life.

One of the best books ive ever read

I read this book last year for my english class and I couldn't get it out of my mind for months. Just read it. You'll be doing yourself an immense favor.

Interesting book

A tale of a young man who did it his way. I don't agree with what he did, but I'm sure he was OK with it!

LOVE Jon Krakauer

Anything this man writes is well written. Even when I have not been intrigued by the title.....

Dope

Dope book good book buy book

Wonderful Tribute

A great way to immortalize a man who had ideals of a meaningful, fulfilling life. Not many understand the true feeling of needing to wander, but for those who do, this book is for you.

Very Interesting!

I really like the book! Is is a story about a kid named Chris who hitch hikes around the country. He eventually ends up in Alaska where he meets his fate. The book also compares him to other hikers in the last chapters of the book.

Facinating! (Sorry it's so long, but read on...)

I'm afraid to sound overly enthusiastic about this book for fear that those so "annoyed" by it will take their anger in spending [money] on Jon Krakauer. Krakauer is a great journalistic writer and his work and research far exceeds any ficticious adventure flick.I can understand how one can get confused with the shifts in location and time during McCandless's two year journey, but retracing the man's steps should not be the focus. Krakauer enlightens the reader and unfolds the mystery of McCandless's death as interviews, childhood experiences and stories of similar adventurers give greater insight to the man's psyche. I was continuously facinated as I read highlighted passages from McCandless's books, grafitto, et al which Krakauer includes at the beginning of each chapter. All the research he has done is not just laid out flat, but revealed in a dialogue between him and the reader.Others I've read remark McCandless as stupid, selfish, uninteresting, and a waste of a human life, suggesting stories by Jack London as a superior examination of human condition. "McCandless [and other readers obviously] conveniently overlooked the fact that London himself had spent just a single winter in the North and that he'd died by his own hand on his California estate at the age of forty, a fatuous drunk, obese and pathetic, maintaining a sedentary existence that bore scant resemblance to the ideals he espoused in print" (44). It is sad to know that such a life holds more respect than one man's passion to actually live out his beliefs as did McCandless. As far as calling this man stupid and selfish, some readers happen to skim over the parts about his college education and donating [money] to OXFAM America, a charity dedicated to fighting hunger. I don't know where you live, but how many teenagers do you know who read War and Peace and spend the last of their money to buy hamburgers to give to the homeless while their peers are out partying?McCandless may have been overly confident and stubborn to make his way on his own, but weren't his ideals real? Those who knew him speak of his true love of nature and high spirits. How anyone can claim he was wasting his life instead of living for the gain of material possesions is beyond me. McCandless reached his dream of living off the land and he did it for over 100 days, while others work their whole lives and feel empty, never knowing the real beauty of the world.Krakauer tells of experiences with Alaskan hunters who claim that McCandless was wrong in thinking the animal he killed was a moose after examining the bones. "It was definitely a caribou...you'd have to be pretty stupid not to tell them apart" (177). Krakauer later found out that the animal was in fact a moose. Seems as though the natives are overly confident of themselves as well.And had it not been for a bit of information left out in a refernce book of edible plants, McCandless may have survived.The main thing that saddens me when I read reviews with low r

Brilliant and Unforgettable

There is little suspense (in the traditional sense of the word) in Krakauer's Into the Wild, as anyone who reads the synopsis or picks up the book instantly learns that it is the story of a young man, Chris McCandless, who ventures into the Alaskan Wilderness and who never gets out. Chris' body is found in an abandoned bus used by moose hunters as a makeshift lodge, and Krakauer skillfully attempts to retrace his steps in an effort both to understand what went wrong, and to figure out what made McCandless give away his money, his car, and head off into Denali National Forest in the first place.His book was one of the most haunting, unforgettable reads in recent years for me. I was mezmerized by passages in the author's other best-selling masterpiece Into Thin Air, such as the passage involving stranded and doomed guide Rob Hall, near the Everest summit, talking to his pregnant wife via satellite phone to discuss names for their unborn child. However, I was unprepared for the depths of emotion felt in reading Into the Wild - it literally kept me up at nights, not just reading but thinking about the book in the dark.Some reviewers criticized the book because they thought McCandless demonstrated a naive and unhealthy lack of respect for the Alaskan wilderness. This is no hike on the Appalachian Trail - Chris was literally dropped off by a trucker into the middle of nowhere, with no provision stores, guides, or means of assistance nearby at his disposal. He had a big bag of rice and a book about native plants, designed to tell him which plants and berries he could eat. "How could he have been so stupid?", they ask.Well, I certainly didn't feel compelled to give away my belongings, pack some rice and a Tolstoy novel and walk into the woods after reading the book, but the author does a remarkable job of exploring McCandless the person, including passages derived from interviews with the many poeple whose lives he touched in his odyssey as he drove and then hitch-hiked cross country from his well-to-do suburban home. Some of the more touching parts of the book involved tearful reminisces by some of these old aquaintances when they learned he had perished.Krakauer also throws in for good measure an illuminating passage about a similar death-defying climb that he foolishly attempted at about the same age as McCandless, with little training and preparation, providing insight into what makes a person attempt a dangerous climb or hike. He even tells several fascinating tales, all of them true, of other recreational hikers who were stranded in the wilderness.By the end of the book, I thought I understood McCandless' character, and I thought Krakauer was probably right in putting his finger on exactly what caused his death. I was moved by his plight regardless of his possible foolishness in venturing into Denali, and the final scenes involving Chris' family were emotionally devastating. You need not be an outdoorsman t