A review
about “Into thin air”, by Jon Krakauer
“Into thin air”, written by the American journalist
Jon Krakauer, is a book about one of the worst tragedies that have occurred in
Mount Everest, when five people died while attempting to reach the summit of
the highest mountain in the world. Krakauer is also an alpinist and he was an
eyewitness of this disaster because he was a member of the expedition that lost
four of their partners. He was on assignment from Outside magazine. Krakauer is
a well known writer because his book “Into the wild”, a story about a young man
who left behind his family and his possessions and lived a life in the
wilderness until he died alone, was a bestseller. Sean Penn directed a good
film based on this book.
Krakauer wrote “Into thin air” not too many
months after the tragedy and his intention was to try to understand what had happened
in those days in Mount Everest, and, we have to say it, to relieve the worries
and guilty conscience he got afterwrads. So we have a first hand story about
this tragedy. A story of life and death.
In May 1996, Krakauer was a member of one of
the two commercial expeditions that were going to attempt to reach the summit
of Mount Everest. On 9 May, those two expeditions were in their way to achieve
their aim. Krakauer was the first one that reached the summit that day and he
went down very quickly because he didn’t have enough oxygen to breathe. He
didn’t realize what had happened until the next day: five climbers had died
during the descent from the summit.
This is a book that breathes fresh air in all
of its pages. Krakauer, as a journalist, uses the journalism skills to understand
what happened there and he tells us a breathtaking story of heroes and villains
in the “crazy” world of high-altitude climbing. The plot of the book is
excellent if you want to know about this fact. Krakauer knows very well how to
write a story that gave him without breath and we realize how hard and
difficult is to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
The air we all breathe keeps us alive and is so
important for us that we can’t leave without it. Krakauer wanted to pay homage
to the people who lost their last breathe in the summit of the highest mountain
in the world and we have to show gratitude to him for this corageous and risky
book.
Title: Into thin air
Author: Jon Krakauer
Date: 1997
Genre: Non-fiction
Publishing house:
Penguin Books
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