Product DescriptionIn April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and , unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild. Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interst that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the dries and desires that propelled McCandless. Digging deeply, he takes an inherently compelling mystery and unravels the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons. When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity , and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding--and not an ounce of sentimentality. Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.
Amazon.com Review"God, he was a smart kid..." So why did Christopher McCandless trade a bright future--a college education, material comfort, uncommon ability and charm--for death by starvation in an abandoned bus in the woods of Alaska? This is the question that Jon Krakauer's book tries to answer. While it doesn't—cannot—answer the question with certainty, Into the Wild does shed considerable light along the way. Not only about McCandless's "Alaskan odyssey," but also the forces that drive people to drop out of society and test themselves in other ways. Krakauer quotes Wallace Stegner's writing on a young man who similarly disappeared in the Utah desert in the 1930s: "At 18, in a dream, he saw himself ... wandering through the romantic waste places of the world. No man with any of the juices of boyhood in him has forgotten those dreams." Into the Wild shows that McCandless, while extreme, was hardly unique; the author makes the hermit into one of us, something McCandless himself could never pull off. By book's end, McCandless isn't merely a newspaper clipping, but a sympathetic, oddly magnetic personality. Whether he was "a courageous idealist, or a reckless idiot," you won't soon forget Christopher McCandless. ReviewsThe book is as advertised. The only problem was how long it took to get here.
First caught a glimpse of the movie, than read the book, and than watched the entire movie again. Both were great, both where different. You just can't simply try to understand the movie without reading the book first, it has much more depth. My reviews are going to be more towards the bad reviewers and those who criticized Christopher McCandless.
Isn't mankind's greatest ambition is to look beyond the stars and find ourselves amongst the universe? To set out blindly in the hopes that we discover something greater than ourselves.
The human spirit is always seeking adventure and the greatest rewards come from the greatest of challenges and difficulties. The challenge of knowing you can never be fully prepared no matter how much preparation and time you've given yourself. The idea of making the best out of a bad situation and getting the most out of what you have. Christopher said it best in his letter to Wayne when he said that his travels where too easy with all the money he had given him with his paycheck. That things were a lot more exciting when he was penniless.
Through the book you realize that his problem with his family meant nothing overall because the fact is everyone one comes from some degree of a dysfunctional family and the experience you gain from those moments in your life are what builds your characteristics. The story is about human ambition, the raw nature of the human spirit, to explore knowledge beyond our horizon and this is revealed through Christopher's story.
Those who criticize his story and his individuality are those who are lost in today's society. Lost in their secure 9 to 5 jobs, weekend getaways, and nightly extravaganzas. Those who measure their lives with the wealth they've accumulated and could never see the world beyond their front door. Would you be on the same pages of those who thought it was insane to colonize in North America and deal with the Natives after Columbus had accidently discovered the new world. Or thought the Lewis and Clark expedition across America was too farfetched. Or perhaps the Wright Brothers should have never even attempted to build a machine that can fly because in your mind it goes against the realm of normal. Without the attempts of these historic individuals, America would not be where it is today. But that's alright, be content with your simple minded life because when it's all over and you're lying on your deathbed, you wouldn't even begin to comprehend your existence in this universe.
This novel is well written. One could sympathize for the main character. One could really get inside of his head to understand why he was the way he was and why he chose to do what he did. This was a decent book, and I would recommend it, but it was not my favorite.
Absolutely mesmerizing and without a doubt the best piece of investigative journalism that I've had the pleasure to read. Krakauer gives McCandless new life on the page all the while paying tribute to wanderlust: the incurable ailment that has doubtless claimed thousands of lives over the millennia.
Many continue to hold Chris McCandless in contempt for his apparent foolishness and the supposed meaninglessness of his death. In fact, Krakauer and his formidable writing ability have given McCandless and his story meaning and significance that a select few of us could ever hope to achieve.
I just finished reading this book, i loved it. I felt it was well written, so easy to read and very difficult to put it down. The biography of this young man alexander supertramp is tragic story, but having read this book i found out a lot more than i ever knew about him.
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