Jon Krakauer Research Paper

Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer is an author and mountaineer of American birth. He is mostly known for his writings involving outdoors, and primarily mountain climbing. Krakauer wrote Into The Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat.

Jon Krakauer was born in 1954, as the third child out of a total of five, and lived out his childhood in Corvallis, Oregon. Jon’s father, Lewis Krakauer was a doctor and weekend climber, introduced Jon to mountaineering at the age of eight. Jon graduated Hampshire College in 1976, and divided his time between working as carpenter, and salmon fisherman, travelling between Colorado, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest regularly, dedicating all of his free time to climbing.

He wrote for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Outside, Architectural Digest, and many other publications. In 1990, Krakauer published two books: Eiger Dreams, which was a collection of his mountaineering essays, and Iceland: Land of The Sagas, a book of photographs he collected.

In 1996 Jon Krakauer reached the top of Mount Everest, however, during the descent he and his group was caught in a storm that wiped out most of his team, leaving just him and a single team mate. A year after the tragic event, Jon released a novel by the title of Into Thin Air to describe the calamity, and bring light to the general commercialization of Mount Everest; Into Thin Air became a #1 New York bestseller. The novel was translated into twenty four different languages, and has earned numerous awards.

Jon Krakauer received the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999; and is currently the editor of Modern Library's Exploration