Jon Krakauer is the author of Eiger Dreams, Into the Wild , and Into Thin Air and is editor of the Modern Library Exploration series.
Born in 1954, he grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, where his father
introduced him to mountaineering as an 8-year-old. After graduating from
Hampshire College in 1976, Krakauer divided his time between Colorado, Alaska,
and the Pacific Northwest, earning his living primarily as a carpenter and
commercial salmon fisherman, spending most of his free moments in the mountains.
In 1977 he traveled alone to the remote Stikine Icecap in Southeast Alaska, went
three weeks without encountering another person, and climbed a new route on a
graceful, intimidating peak called the Devil's Thumb. In 1992 he climbed the West
Face of Cerro Torre in the Patagonian Andes (a mile-high spike of granite
sheathed in a carapace of frozen rime, Cerro Torre was once considered the most
difficult mountain on earth.)
In May 1996 Krakauer reached the top of Mt. Everest, but during the descent a
storm engulfed the peak, taking the lives of four of the five teammates who
climbed to the summit with him. An analysis of the calamity that he wrote for
Outside magazine received a National Magazine Award. The unsparingly honest book
he subsequently wrote about Everest, Into Thin Air, became a #1 New York Times
bestseller and has been translated into 24 languages. It was also honored as the
"Book of the Year" by Time magazine, one of the "Best Books of
the Year" by the New York Times Book Review, a finalist for a 1997 National
Book Critics Circle Award, and one of three finalists for the 1998 Pulitzer
Prize in General Non-Fiction.
For the past two decades Krakauer's writing has been published in the likes of
Outside, GEO, Architectural Digest, Rolling Stone, Time, The Washington Post,
The New York Times, and National Geographic. An article he wrote for Smithsonian
about vulcanology received the 1997 Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in
Science Journalism from the American Geophysical Union. His 1996 book, Into
The Wild--about an idealistic young man named Chris McCandless who perished in the
Alaskan bush--spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list.
This followed the publication of two books by Krakauer in 1990: Eiger Dreams, a
collection of his mountaineering essays, and Iceland: Land of the Sagas, a book
of his photographs.
In 1998 Krakauer established the Everest '96 Memorial Fund at the Boulder
Community Foundation, endowing it with royalties from Into Thin Air. Created as
a tribute to his companions lost on Everest, the fund provides humanitarian aid
to the indigenous peoples of the Himalaya and supports organizations working to
preserve the natural environment throughout the world. Krakauer also serves on
the boards of the American Himalayan Foundation and the Alex Lowe Charitable
Foundation.
In 1999 Krakauer received an Academy Award in Literature from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters--a prestigious award intended "to honor writers
of exceptional accomplishment." According to the Academy's citation, "Krakauer
combines the tenacity and courage of the finest tradition of investigative
journalism with the stylish subtlety and profound insight of the born writer.
His account of an ascent of Mount Everest has led to a general reevaluation of
climbing and of the commercialization of what was once a romantic, solitary
sport; while his account of the life and death of Christopher McCandless, who
died of starvation after challenging the Alaskan wilderness, delves even more
deeply and disturbingly into the fascination of nature and the devastating
effects of its lure on a young and curious mind."
Krakauer's latest book, which he has spent the last four years researching and
writing, is Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, published by
Doubleday in July 2003. As a child in Oregon, many of the author's playmates,
teachers, and athletic coaches were Latter-day Saints. Although he envied the
unfluctuating certainty of the faith professed so enthusiastically by these
Mormon friends and acquaintances, he was often baffled by it, and has sought to
comprehend the formidable power of such belief ever since. The upshot of this
lifelong quest is Under The Banner of Heaven, in which Krakauer examines the
nature of religious passion through the lens of Mormon Fundamentalism.
This biography was last updated on 09/01/2003.
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