Customer Reviews
Unputdownable - By: booktylicious, 29 Dec 2008 
This is nowin my top 5 books of all time, I bought the book as I had just climbed my first mountain(not a very high one) & was now thinking of bigger & better! After reading this book I will not be attempting to reach the summit but am now entranced by the highest mountainin the world. This is a fantastically well written book that keeps you gripped from start to finish, even if you have no interestin climbing buy this book!
Into thin air - By: D. Poole, 09 Oct 2008 This has to be the best book I have readin a long time. I literally could not put it down ! It was gripping. The mountineering side of it is explainedin laymans terms & overall it is extremely well written. Probably the kind of book I will even read twice over.
An intense read - By: Foxylock, 30 Sep 2008 
There are a lot of books knocking about that cover the horrific story of the 1996 storm on Everest,this is without doubt one of the better ones.Jon Krakauer is a journalist by profession & his pedigree becomes evident right from the get go.He presents the reader with an intense honest & gripping account of his own personal battle with the malevolent forces of nature.We get a first hand account of the avarice of expedition operators,we see the poor judgement of inexperienced guides,the fury of mother nature & the sheer bad luck that befell many a climber that fateful day.This book became a no 1 best seller & the catalyst for a long running argument with other members of the climbing community. READ IT
More a novel than reality - By: sychnant, 16 Sep 2008 
Having also read (like many people) "The Climb" by Anatoli Baukreev i found Krakauers book to be filled with what appear to be speculative & unsupported comments & statements about many events that he was not privvy to.
Although its a good "novel" to read i think his book has to be seen as more fiction than fact & that should be keptin perspective when reading about his account of the late Anatoli Baukreev.
A very personal account. - By: John Williams, 20 Jun 2008 Because this is such a personal account, I would suggest that those who criticize it for being one sided are wide of the mark. Krakauer himself acknowledges the difficulty he hadin remembering accurately &in comparing his memories with those of others. Much of what he is recalling happened when he & others were suffering from severe exhaustion, oxygen deprivation & altitude sickness. He also admits that writing this book was a cathartic exercise for him, which has resultedin his readers being less well served than they should have been. Yes, he criticizes others & questions their actions & motives, but he is also hard on himself, & he does recount the heroic deeds of others (such as Anatoli Boukreev) as well as their questionable ones. I suppose that for the sake of completeness it would be interesting to read Boukreev's account, but not essential. This book stands on its own.
And what a book it is! I would defy anyone, be they an experienced climber or someone with no no previous interestin mountaineering, to put it down once begun. This is the antidote to all of those coffee table books that present only the benign, picturesque face of Everest. From the squalid conditions on the walk-in & at base camp to the harrowing climaxin the death zone, I was struck by the honesty of this book. The characters involved are also well drawn, though some may not like the way Krakauer paints them. There are some great climbers who are not good enough writers to do justice to their exploits. Krakauer would not count himself as a great Himalayan mountaineer, & would perhaps question whether his trip to Everestin 1996 was worth while at all. Nevertheless, his ability to write about his experiences makes this book a very worth while read.
