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Into Thin Air
Studio : Random House Audio
by Random House Audio
Release Date : 1998-04-06
Publisher : Random House Audio
Released : 1998-04-06
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 6
EAN : 9780553502190
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 1499 reviews)
List Price : $31.95
Our Price : $24.82
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Product Description |
Unabridged!
When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering affects of oxygen deprivation. As he turned to begin his long, dangerous decent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly toward the top. No one had noticed that the sky had begun to fill with clouds. Six hours later and 3,000 feet lower, as the storm swept the peek with seventy-knot winds and blinding snow, Krakauer collapsed in his tent, freezing, hallucinating from exhaustion and hypoxia, but safe. The following morning he awakened to learn that six of his companions hadn't made it back to their camp, and were in a desperate struggle for their lives. When the storm finally passed, five of his fellow climbers would be dead, and the sixth so horribly frostbitten that he would have to have his right hand amputated. By the time all expeditions had quit the mountain and departed Nepal, twelve people had perished on the slopes of Everest.
Into Thin Air is the definitive, personal account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of Eiger Dreams and Into the Wild. On assignment from Outside magazine, Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to the Himalayas to report the growing commercialization of the planet's highest mountain. Everest has always been a dangerous mountain. From the first British expeditions in the 1920s until 1996, one climber has died for every four who have attained the summit.  This shocking death toll has not put a damper on the burgeoning business of guided ascents, however, in which amateur alpinists with alarmingly disparate skills are ushered up the mountain for a $65,000 fee.
To ascend into the thin, frigid air above 26,000 feet--the cruising altitude of a commercial jetliner--is an inherently inrrational act. The environment is unimaginably harsh, the margin for error minuscule. Krakauer examines  what it is about Evereest that has compelled so many people--including himself--to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer's frank eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement. |
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Jas-store.com Review |
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"Intrinsically irrational" is how Jon Krakauer characterizes the compulsion to climb Mount Everest in his audiobook Into Thin Air. The highly publicized fates of the May 1996 Everest expeditions, including the tragic loss of 12 lives, seem to bear out Krakauer's statement. Listening to Krakauer read his own account of the events in this unabridged version adds a uniquely intimate and thought-provoking dimension to the tragedy. Although Krakauer reads his account with journalistic professionalism, it's impossible to forget that you are listening to someone unburdening himself of a great weight, an unburdening that sometimes nearly approaches a confession. Since the 1980s, more and more "marginally qualified dreamers" have attempted the ascent of Everest, as guided commercial expeditions have dangled the possibility of reaching the roof of the world in front of anyone wealthy enough to pay for the privilege. In 1996, Outside magazine asked Krakauer, a frequent contributor, to write a piece on the commercialization of Everest, and Krakauer signed on as a member of New Zealander Rob Hall's expedition. The disastrous outcome of the 1996 expedition forced Krakauer to write a very different article. Those who read Krakauer's book may wonder whether the audiobook can possibly shed more light on the unfortunate events. It does. Krakauer's chronicle is chilling and horrifying. He recounts with excruciating detail the physical and mental cost of such a climb. Even under the best of circumstances, each step up the ice-clad mountain is monumentally exhausting, and the oxygen-deprived brain loses the ability to make reliable judgements. And on May 10, 1996, when Hall's expedition and several others made their summit assault, the conditions were far from ideal. The mountain was so "crowded" that climbers had to wait their turn near the summit while their bottled oxygen dwindled by the minute. By afternoon a blinding hurricane-force storm had stranded a number of climbers on the highest, most exposed reaches of the mountain. By writing and reading Into Thin Air, Krakauer may have hoped to exorcise some of his own demons and lay to rest some of the painful questions that still surround the event. He takes great pains to provide a balanced picture of the people and events he witnessed and gives due credit to the tireless and dedicated Sherpas. He also avoids blasting easy targets such as Sandy Pittman, the wealthy socialite who brought an espresso maker along on the expedition. Krakauer's highly personal inquiry into the catastrophe provides a great deal of insight into what went wrong. But for Krakauer himself, further interviews and investigations only lead him to the conclusion that his perceived failures were directly responsible for a fellow climber's death. Clearly, Krakauer remains haunted by the disaster, and although he relates a number of incidents in which he acted selflessly and even heroically, he seems unable to view those instances objectively. In the end, despite his evenhanded and even generous assessment of others' actions, he reserves a full measure of vitriol for himself. (Running time: 467 minutes; six tapes) |
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Breathless |
I was on lunch break at a previous job and reading Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau for the second time in my life. My co-worker comes up to me and said, "is that a good book, I've never read it?". I told him it was a book I could relate to, because I too like being outside and surrounded by nothing but nature and the way Mr. Thoreau described his experimental sojourn out in the woods was exactly the way I preferred to live too. My friend told me, "I have a book that you would probably like, It's called, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. I'll bring it with me tomorrow and give it to you to borrow." I immensely enjoyed that book!
Beginning of this year while browsing in the nature section at a book store, I came across Into Thin Air by the above same author. I thought to myself, "Jon Krakauer told a very fine story with Into the Wild so maybe I should give this book a chance." It didn't disappoint me. |
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Riveting |
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Even non-outdoorsmen (that would be me) will enjoy this true story of triumph over the mountain. I highly highly recommend! |
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Not the whole story |
Let me state up front that I'm a Krakauer fan, that I've read (and own) many of his books, that I consider his short story about climbing the Devil's Thumb a true classic in mountaineering literature, and that I've read "Into Thin Air" several times. It is a page turner.
Recently however, I discovered the point of view of someone else covering the same tragedy. I am referring to The Climb by Boukreev and DeWalt. For those that don't know, Boukreev was a guide on the mountain that terrible day and he is cast as a villain in Krakauer's book. To be honest, I was disinclined to hear his side -- I thought it would be some sort of white-wash, I was not interested in hearing a point of view that differs from Krakauer's sharp, no-holds-barred analysis.
But I finally read The Climb. And I must say that it gives one some much-needed perspective on the entire drama. It makes it clear that Krakauer is not unbiased, that he has probably worked too hard to assign blame for the tragedy. According to Krakauer, the main villains are Sandy Hill Pittman (a client) and the professional guide Anatoli Boukreev. From this other perspective, one can understand that Boukreev's actions were completely understandable and correct. One also gets the distinct impression that Krakauer had already made up his mind before interviewing Boukreev and that perhaps the Russian / English language barrier prevented Boukreev from adequately explaining himself.
An unbiased analysis of what happened at the summit of Everest that day might very well assign much blame to expedition leader Rob Hall who was distracted with getting Doug Hansen to the top. This was a misjudgement that eventually cost Hansen, Hall himself, guide Andy Harris, and Yosuko Namba their lives. Yes, Namba's death could be laid at Hall's feet. It was Hall's job to turn Hansen around. It was Hall's job to get his guides and his clients down the mountain. It was Hall's job to account for poor Beck Weathers, who sat freezing on the "Balcony" throughout the day. All these things were Hall's responsibility, yet Krakauer never comes down on Hall in the way he criticized Sandy Pittman or Boukreev. Hall is dead, I know, so it would be in poor taste to criticize a dead man ... especially one who said such poignant things to his wife back in New Zealand. It just wouldn't make for as good a story, would it?
Being critical of Sandy Hill Pittman is manifestly silly. She was a client and as such cannot be blamed for taking too much gear up the mountain. She is not a professional and so should be forgiven such a miscalculation. As for Boukreev, it is clear that he had very good reasons to go quickly down the mountain -- he had fixed rope to the top,
then was worried about getting people down off the route and felt he could best assist down low. He cleared this with his boss, Scott Fischer, who also thought it was a good idea. This plan actually turned out to be prescient -- it was Boukreev, and only Boukreev, that had the energy and the courage to go out looking for the stranded clients on the South Col in the middle of the night. By doing this he saved three lives that would otherwise have been lost. Moreover, he was not in control of the many slight miscalculations that ended so tragically. If we are to blame anyone for that, it would have to be the expedition leaders, Rob Hall and Scott Fischer.
So it is a page turner, yes, and Krakauer is a very smart man and is worth listening to. Like many smart people however, he also suffers from the fault of being maybe a little too certain of his own conclusions. |
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Amazing adventure story about the 1996 Mt Everest Climbing Disaster |
As a journalist for Outside magazine, Jon Krakauer was assigned to climb and cover a guided trip to the top of Mt Everest. After being dropped off in Kathmandu at the end of March 1996, where he soon meets his guides and co-clients, he is on his way to a memorably grisly adventure. The group slowly makes its way up the mountain, stopping at a series of base camps during a six-week period designed to acclimate their bodies to the extreme altitude. Up until the last day push to the summit on May 10, the trip is exciting, but mostly uneventful. It's only after Krakauer reaches the top and heads back toward camp that a sudden (though not unusual) storm arrives to wreak havoc on the climbers. From that point forward, the situation goes from dire to disaster. The weather situation, combined with a series of unfortunate occurrences (miscommunication between the guides and the clients about the turnaround time, several expeditions choosing to go for the top on the same day, and certain members of the various teams not completing pre-established tasks designed to improve safety) and topped off with the impaired mental and physical condition of many of the climbers leads to a tragedy of epic proportions. When it was all said and done (p xvi) "nine climbers from four expeditions were dead, and three more lives would be lost before the month was out." In his characteristic action-packed style, filled with facts about everything from the mountain to the participants and everything in between, Krakauer paints an excruciatingly cold, snowy, scary picture of what it was like to scale the world's highest peak during a death-record breaking year. Unfortunately, his decision (seemingly due to a combination of survivor's guilt and regret over altitude-affected, incorrect information he provided to prospective rescuers) to include a post-climb "epilogue" chapter takes away from an otherwise objective, near perfect account of the disaster.
Into Thin Air lovers may also enjoy: Into the Wild by Jon Krakaeur, Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, The Yellow Spruce by (Krakauer wanna be) John Vaillant, and The Good Rain by Timothy Egan. |
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Awesome, gut-wrenching....loved it |
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I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT AFTER READING THIS BOOK, I WANT TO START MOUNTAIN CLIMBING. THERE IS THAT SOMETHING IN ME, THAT SAYS YOU CAN DO IT. THIS BOOK IS A MUST READ. MY HEART GOES OUT TO THE FAMILIES AND FRIENDS OF THE VICTIMS. READING THE BOOK ALONE CANNOT EXPLAIN THE FEELING OF CLIMBING AT 29,000 FEET, IT MUST BE SCARY. THE IDEA THAT SOMEONE WOULD LET SOMEONE ELSE DIE ON A MOUNTAIN SO THAT THEY COULD CLIMB TO THE TOP IS ASTOUNDING. WHILE I UNDERSTAND IT, IT IS WILD. I COULD GO ON FOREVER, JUST READ THE BOOK. |
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