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Jon Krakauer (born April 12, 1954) is an American writer and mountaineer. He is the author of bestselling nonfiction books— Into the Wild; Into Thin Air; Under the Banner of Heaven; and —as well as numerous magazine articles. He was a member of an ill-fated expedition to summit Mount Everest in 1996, one of the deadliest disasters in the history of climbing Everest.
In 1996, Krakauer took part in a guided ascent of Mount Everest. His group was one of those caught in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in which a violent storm trapped a number of climbers high on the slopes of the mountain. Krakauer reached the peak and returned to camp, but four of his teammates (including group leader Rob Hall) died while making their descent in the storm.
A candid recollection of the event was published in Outside magazine and, later, in the book Into Thin Air. By the end of the 1996 climbing season, fifteen people had died on the mountain, making it the deadliest single year in Everest history to that point. This has since been exceeded by the sixteen deaths in the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche, and the 2015 earthquake avalanche disaster in which twenty-two people were killed. Krakauer has publicly criticized the commercialization of Mount Everest.
The book reached the top of The New York Times
Krakauer has contributed royalties from this book to the Everest '96 Memorial Fund at the Boulder Community Foundation, which he founded as a tribute to his deceased climbing partners.
In a TV-movie version of the book, Krakauer was played by Christopher McDonald. Everest, a feature film based on the events of the disaster directed by Baltasar Kormákur, was released in 2015. In the film, Krakauer is portrayed by Michael Kelly. Krakauer denounced the movie, saying some of its details were fabricated and defamatory. He also expressed regret regarding Sony's rapid acquisition of the rights to the book. Director Baltasar Kormákur responded, claiming Krakauer's first-person account was not used as source material for the film, and alleged that his version of events conflicted with the plot.
In the book, Krakauer noted that Russian-Kazakhstani guide Anatoli Boukreev, Scott Fischer's top guide on the expedition, ascended the summit without supplemental oxygen, "which didn't seem to be in the clients' best interest".Krakauer, Jon. Into the Air. Anchor Books, 1999 paperback edition. p. 187. He also wrote that Boukreev descended from the summit several hours ahead of his clients, and that this was "extremely unorthodox behavior for a guide".Krakauer, Jon. Into the Air. Anchor Books, 1999 paperback edition. p. 218. He noted however that, once he had descended to the top camp, Boukreev was heroic in his tireless attempts to rescue the missing climbers. Five months after Into Thin Air was published, Boukreev gave his own account of the Everest disaster in the book The Climb, co-written with G. Weston DeWalt.
Differences centered on what experienced mountaineers thought about the facts of Boukreev's performance. As Galen Rowell from the American Alpine Journal wrote to Krakauer, "the fact is that every one of Boukreev's clients survived without major injuries while the clients who died or received major injuries were members of your party. Could you explain how Anatoli Boukreev's shortcomings as a guide led to the survival of his clients…?"DeWalt p.267 In an article in The Wall Street Journal, Rowell cited numerous inconsistencies in Krakauer's narrative, observing that Krakauer was sleeping in his tent while Boukreev was rescuing other climbers. Rowell argued that Boukreev's actions were nothing short of heroic, and his judgment prescient: "Boukreev foresaw problems with clients nearing camp, noted five other guides on the peak Everest, and positioned himself to be rested and hydrated enough to respond to an emergency. His heroism was not a fluke." After the publication of Into Thin Air and The Climb, DeWalt, Boukreev, and Krakauer became embroiled in disagreements about Krakauer's portrayal of Boukreev. Krakauer had reached a détente with Boukreev in November 1997, but the Russian climber was killed by an avalanche only a few weeks later while climbing Annapurna Massif.Author's postscript, 1999 edition of Into Thin Air.
In 2006, Tom Elliott and Pawel Gula produced a documentary inspired by the book, Damned to Heaven.
Robert Millet, Professor of Religious Understanding at Brigham Young University, an LDS institution, reviewed the book and described it as confusing, poorly organized, misleading, erroneous, prejudicial and insulting. Mike Otterson, Director of Media Relations for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), told the Associated Press, "This book is not history, and Krakauer is no historian. He is a storyteller who cuts corners to make the story sound good. His basic thesis appears to be that people who are religious are irrational, and that irrational people do strange things."
In response, Krakauer criticized the LDS Church hierarchy, citing the opinion of D. Michael Quinn, a historian who was excommunicated in 1993, who wrote that "The tragic reality is that there have been occasions when Church leaders, teachers, and writers have not told the truth they knew about difficulties of the Mormon past, but have offered to the Saints instead a mixture of platitudes, half-truths, omissions, and plausible denials." Krakauer wrote, "I happen to share Dr. Quinn's perspective".
In April 2022, a limited series of Under the Banner of Heaven was released by Hulu starring Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones.
The book, , was released by Doubleday on September 15, 2009. It draws on the journals and letters of Pat Tillman, an NFL professional football player and U.S. Army Ranger whose death in Afghanistan made him a symbol of American sacrifice and heroism, though it also became a subject of controversy because of the U.S. Army's cover-up of the fact that Tillman died by friendly fire. The book draws on the journals and letters of Tillman, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers who served alongside him, and research Krakauer performed in Afghanistan. It also serves in part as a historical narrative, providing a general history of the civil wars in Afghanistan.
Writing about the book in the New York Times Book Review, Dexter Filkins said that "too many of the details of Tillman’s life recounted here are mostly banal and inconsequential," but also stated, concerning Tillman's death, "While most of the facts have been reported before, Krakauer performs a valuable service by bringing them all together—particularly those about the cover-up. The details, even five years later, are nauseating to read." In his review in the Los Angeles Times, Dan Neil wrote that the book is "a beautiful bit of reporting" and "the definitive version of events surrounding Tillman's death."
The book—and a related 60 Minutes interview broadcast the day before the book's release—were controversial. Some CAI donors filed a class-action lawsuit against Mortenson for having allegedly defrauded them with false claims in his books. The suit was eventually rejected. In December 2011, CAI produced a comprehensive list of projects completed over a period of years and projects CAI is currently working on.
Mortenson and CAI were investigated by the Montana attorney general, who determined that they had made financial "missteps", and the Attorney General reached a settlement for restitution from Mortenson to CAI in excess of $1 million.
The 2016 documentary 3000 Cups of Tea by Jennifer Jordan and Jeff Rhoads claims that the accusations against Mortenson put forward by 60 Minutes and Jon Krakauer are largely untrue. Jordan said in 2014: "We are still investigating this story. So far, our findings are indicating that the majority of the allegations are grossly misrepresented to make him appear in the worst possible light, or are outright false. Yes, Greg is a bad manager and accountant, and he is the first to admit that, but he is also a tireless humanitarian with a crucially important mission."
Emily Bazelon, writing for the New York Times Book Review, gave the book a lukewarm review, criticizing it for not fully exploring its characters or appreciating the difficulty colleges face in handling and trying to prevent sexual assault, writing that "Instead of delving deeply into questions of fairness as universities try to fulfill a recent government mandate to conduct their own investigations and hearings—apart from the police and the courts—Krakauer settles for bromides."
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Lacy M. Johnson gave the book a positive review, describing the writing as "compelling" and the research as "meticulous". "I wish women didn’t need a voice such as his to corroborate our experience of violence, but I am glad we have him as an ally in this work," Johnson wrote. " Missoula will undoubtedly fortify those of us who have already broken our silence and may rally those who have not dared to. There is some justice in that, no matter how complicated and faint."
As editor
, Krakauer edits the Exploration series of the Modern Library.
Selected bibliography
Sources
External links
Categories: Official Website, 1954 Births, 20th-century American Male Writers, 21st-century American Non-fiction Writers, Jewish American Journalists, American Male Journalists, American Male Non-fiction Writers, American Mountain Climbers, American Non-fiction Outdoors Writers, American Summiters Of Mount Everest, American People Of Scandinavian Descent, Corvallis High School Alumni, Hampshire College Alumni, Jewish American Non-fiction Writers, Jews From Oregon, Journalists From Oregon, Living People, American Male Feminists, American Feminists, Mormon Studies Scholars, Writers From Brookline, Massachusetts, Writers From Corvallis, Oregon, Writers From Boulder, Colorado, 21st-century American Jews, Climbing And Mountaineering Writers
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