Into Thin AirA Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster

The remarkably raw story of a tragic Mt. Everest climb.
I remember buying Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air because I had developed a recent obsession with hiking, and had heard the book was about an epic climb of Mt. Everest in 1996. This was simultaneously a bad and good idea. Bad, because the climb sadly turned out to have a tragic ending — of the twenty climbers, guides and Sherpas who bravely struggled up the mountain, only fourteen returned alive. But it was also a good, maybe even great idea, because Krakauer's firsthand account of the event is moving, thorough and breathtaking, a model of modern non-fiction writing. (It was an international bestseller, and, amongst other accolades, Time magazine's book of the year.) It's impossible not to be gripped with fear as Krakauer describes how, because of a series of mishaps, a sudden storm and questionable decisions from the professional guides, climbers start dying, one by one.

Krakauer, the author of five other books (including Into the Wild), also narrates the audiobook, and it's hard to imagine anyone else voicing this story. He speaks in a straightforward fashion, simply revealing what is a remarkably raw tale, yet he bursts with energy when recounting dialogue. It's in these moments, when he mimics his lost friends, that the fondness and admiration he felt for so many of the climbers is obvious: they live on through his words.