As usual, a thoroughly enjoyable and thoughful non-fiction book by Jon Krakauer. I read anything by this author. I have never been disappointed yet. In this book, Krakauer covers the sad, true tale of a young adventurer who pushed himself until he died. Krakauer wrote the original article about Chris McCandless in Outside Magazine before he went on to write this book. He does a good job of piecing together the last 2 years of Chris' life by throrough research, speaking with his family and anyone who was in contact with Chris, and actually going to the places covered by Chris in his travels. Krakauer also devotes a couple of chapters to his own wonderlust as a young man in attempting to climb a mountain. I found this to be very interesting as well, having already read Into Thin Air, about Krakauer's climbing of Mt. Everest during a tragedy filled season which killed 7 climbers.

Really touching and sad story of a upper middle class young man who in 1992 went into the wilderness of Alaska with a desire to live off the land. And he did, however at the end of summer, his body was found in an abandoned bus where he apparently died of starvation. The author, Jon Krakauer bases the story on his own experiences and Chris McCandless's journal found in the bus. The story reminds me of times in my own adolesence when I had a romantic view of living in the wild, living off the land, the thoughts that I could accomplish anything. Good read. It is now a movie also, which I have yet to see.

But after 88 pages, i put it down, and put it up for swap. My husband liked the book a lot, I had a hard time getting into the story, it just seemed to me that this McCandless guy lost his marbles and his sense of perspective. Krakauer tries to make him seem like a hero, or a revolutionary, however i did not get any of that from the guy, just that he somehow lost his way, and turned on civilization. so many people loved this book,it was a bestseller and they made a movie about it, I am in the minority, this is just my opinion.

Christopher McCandless goes into the wild but does not come back alive.

Such extreme personalities always seem to intrigue the adventure seeking mountain climber Krakauer, so true-to-form he investigates and reconstructs McCandless back story to delve into the hanging questions. What compels McCandless, a young man with apparently everything going for him, to discard anything he can't carry on his back and to head off into the wilds of Alaska? And what might he have learned?

Jon Krakauer knows how to write a compelling investigative story. Short read, engaging, but not a classic or Krakauer's best. Sean Penn directs an even better movie based on his own adaptation of story.

I didn't care for this book. I don't know why this guy was glorified so much. I think he needed some psychiatric care. I do feel bad for his family though.

As for the writing............not my cup of tea.

A little slow in the middle but an interesting look at the innerworkings of a man's mind and heart as he goes to / runs from something bigger than himself. The author's life and similar circumstances perhaps shed some light on a true mystery: why did Chris McCandless die in Alaska?

I was working at Emory University when Chris disappeared. I remember being disturbed by this story. I'll always wonder what really happened to him....what he was running from. I enjoyed reading Krakauer's other books too.

Intersting story but not very dramatic. I expected more.

"Into the Wild" is both a chronicle of the life of American college grad turned drifter Chris McCandless, and a reflection on people whose somewhat anti-societal views lead them to embrace exploring the outer limits of nature's dangerous boundaries. Krakauer's mountain climbing experiences, as well as accounts of various other people is a visage which shows that many of the people who have been there are forever changed and most want to return.

Krakauer chronicles the adventure of Chris McCaddless who for years has his eyes set on a goal of both personal and spiritual definition as well as outcasting himself from the very society he often hated. Although the front of the book already tells Chris's fate, the harrowing and sometimes exhilarating journey that took him there is not lost on the reader...Life is a journey not a destination, and for Chris it is the friendships he accrues as well as the things he learned within himself that make his story so memorable.

One man's journey... Krakauer really knows package a story. Sensational yes but not quite riveting. If you liked "Into Thin Air" you'll like this - it's a good read with a good lesson.

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First and foremost I must confess that I have a profound love and respect for Christopher McCandless. Whatever his faults or eccentricities, the man is like a deity to me.

Saying this, I give "INTO THE WILD" two stars.

Jon Krakauer is a fantastic story-teller. "UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN" and "INTO THIN AIR" are exquisite works of heartbreaking research; however "INTO THE WILD" (moving as it may be) was tweaked far too much for my liking.

Of course, INTO THE WILD worked on me, pulled my heartstrings. I read the book and fell in love with a dead man and his ideals, but I cannot forgive Krakuer for his untruths.

For this book, Krakauer romanticized Chris -- either for numbers or to ease the painful wounds of Chris's family, I cannot say. While the main portrait of the man is true (which creates the feral Love and/or Hate reaction readers will have to him), there are three untruths in the book which taint the Christopher McCandless story.


(My source for the following is the Terra Incognita website devoted to Ron Lamothe's Christopher McCandless documentary "THE CALL OF THE WILD" -- which I highly recommend as a thoroughly researched piece on McCandless and the effect or non-effect created by his death. Whatever quotes I include also come from this site, located here: http://tifilms.com/wild/call_debunked.htm)



I. Chris McCandless walked into the wild with his birth certificate, driver’s license, health card, social security card, voter identification, and three library cards. He also brought $300 tucked in his wallet AND A MAP.

These items were all found in Chris McCandless's wallet, which was safely housed in a secret compartment in his backpack. This backpack, somehow overlooked by the police, was found in the fall of 1992 by one Will Forsberg. Bear in mind, INTO THE WILD was published in 1996 -- four years since the finding of that backpack.

So, then, the depictions of Chris burning his identification beside his drowned yellow Datsun (as depicted in the Sean Penn film, which followed closely the book) or leaving, among other things, eighty-five cents in the truck which drove him to the Stampede Trail are completely fictitious.

As for the map Krakauer waffles less than gracefully.

"In the original [OUTSIDE MAGAZINE] story, Krakauer writes that 'he left the map in Gallien’s truck, along with his watch, his comb, and all his money, which amounted to 85 cents.' However, when the book was published, these lines were changed to the following: 'Alex insisted on giving Gallien his watch, his comb, and what he said was all his money: eighty-five cents in loose change' (p. 7). What happened to the map? Why the nuance of 'what he said' was all his money? Was the reason for the latter that Krakauer suspected Chris had more than eighty-five cents on him, which would make sense considering he writes in another chapter that Chris had left Carthage twelve days earlier with 'approximately one thousand dollars tucked in his boot' (p. 68).

Perhaps mention of the map mysteriously disappeared is because the map is listed in the list of possessions drafted by the coroner.

Yet Krakuer (who had access to the list, ergo the road map as well) still makes no mention of the map -- in the original article or the book, and subsequently the movie.

From INTO THE WILD: "At the coroner’s office they were given the handful of possessions recovered with the body: Chris’s rifle, a pair of binoculars, the fishing rod Ronald Franz had given him, one of the Swiss Army knives Jan Burres had given him, the book of plant lore in which his journal was written, a Minolta camera, and five rolls of film—not much else" (p. 131).

On one page alone: "Because he had no topographic map"; and in the next paragraph, "He simply got rid of the map. In his own mind, if nowhere else, the terra would thereby remain incognita"; and then followed by the line, "Because he lacked a good map..." (p. 174)."

Why not mention the map that Chris did have? Why keep up the charade?

"... he continues to let others believe that Chris didn’t have any map at all, and his pat answer to questions on the subject deflects the truth by talking about what other people say rather than correcting the interviewer (excerpts below from The Oprah Winfrey Show, 9/20/07; and Sundance Channel’s 2007 season premiere of Iconoclasts):

OPRAH WINFREY: So eating the seed was the fatal—-was the fatal blow?
JON KRAKAUER: That's what finally pushed him over the edge.
OPRAH WINFREY: But not having a map?
JON KRAKAUER: Not having a map. He—-well, I mean, it's easy to criticize Chris. He didn't have a map. He didn't have an axe. He had a very small-caliber rifle. But, this was not--this was by design.

From Iconoclasts:
Jon Krakauer: People don’t get it. “He didn’t even have a fucking map! What kind of idiot.” That was the point. There’s no blank spots on the map anymore, anywhere on earth. You want a blank spot on the map, you’ve got to leave the map behind."

But again, Chris did have a map. This proves beyond reasonable doubt that Chris was not a loon hell-bent on death by nature. He had indeed planned to come back to civilization and write his book, perhaps reconcile with his father.

Is it possible that Chris's possession of a map diminishes his great Alaskan Odyssey? Of course not. Yet it is not mentioned by Krakuer, who must insist that Chris walked blindly to his tragically romantic death.


II. Chris McCandless did not die as the result of eating toxic mold, poisonous plants or any combination of the two (as pushed by Krakauer since the 1996 release of INTO THE WILD -- despite the lack of any scientific evidence proving the toxicity of the wild potato plant or the wild sweet pea, which Chris had been able to distinguish without trouble for three weeks). Chris's death can be answered simply and tragically enough: it was a mere act of irony, that this man who donated his life's savings to OXFAM would starve to death.

"As far back as 1997, Dr. Thomas Clausen—-the biochemist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who examined the wild potato plant (Hedysarum alpinum) for Jon Krakauer—-concluded after exhaustive testing that no part of H. alpinum is toxic. Neither the roots nor the seeds. Accordingly, McCandless could not have poisoned himself in the way suggested by Krakauer in his 1996 book INTO THE WILD, and in every subsequent reprinting of the book over the next decade."

Nor could Chris have mistaken the wild potato plant with the wild sweet pea and died that way (as suggested in the movie). There are no toxic compounds in the wild sweet pea and there is not one case in modern medical literature which might infer otherwise.

But wait! The seeds were moldy! Chris had stored them in a repeatedly washed Ziploc bag and so mold grew on the seeds, a deadly mold, which prevented Chris from absorbing any nutrition and so he died that way!

Krakuer pushed forth this new theory after a September 2007 Men’s Journal article entitled “THE CULT OF CHRIS MCCANDLESS”. This article revealed for the first time in the Lower 48 the falsehood of the H. alpinum (wild potato plant) theory.

But "He provides no evidence in support of the idea that this particular mold (Rhizoctonia leguminicola) has been found in Alaska on Hedysarum alpinum plants and linked with swainsonine. Nor can he provide a single case where a human has ever, anywhere, been poisoned in this way. And yet, Krakauer speaks of it in public as if this were a proven fact: 'It turned out—-I’ve learned, since writing the book, those seeds were moldy. And this mold created a poison that doesn't actually kill you outright, it keeps you from digesting food. So even though he was still eating food, he couldn't make use of it. And that—-so he starved to death because he ate these moldy seeds' (The Oprah Winfrey Show, 9/20/07). The same day he repeated this claim on National Public Radio’s 'All Things Considered,' describing to Melissa Block how he 'puzzled' over this for years, but was now 'pretty convinced' that Chris McCandless died from eating moldy potato seeds."

He gathered this from a single photograph of a Ziplog bag and a quantity of seeds. Miraculously Krakauer deduced from this one photograph the exact breed of mold (Rhizoctonia leguminicola) which grew on the moldering seeds in the moist plastic bag and the exact toxic alkoloid (swainsonine) which then grew on the mold.

Granted, he could have done that. However this is an "untested theory, and one based entirely on veterinary literature—-an obscure case where some horses in North Carolina ate large quantities of moldy red clover hay. He provides no evidence in support of the idea that this particular mold (Rhizoctonia leguminicola) has been found in Alaska on Hedysarum alpinum plants and linked with swainsonine. Nor can he provide a single case where a human has ever, anywhere, been poisoned in this way."

No. The simple fact of the matter is that Christopher McCandless (a sinewy cross county runner with a 30-inch waist) starved to death. For all his time in Alaska, he could only acquire small game (squirrels and the like). The one moose he did kill (and tried to cure incorrectly for the environment he was in) quickly rotted in the rife, moist atmosphere.

It is stated in Chris's own journals that he went days without food.

A small man, hunting and foraging in the wild, expending more energy than he could consume...

"Using peer-reviewed scientific literature, relying on calculations developed by the World Health Organization, and informed by McCandless’s own food journals, we tested this hypothesis. The result was that, despite some success hunting and gathering, McCandless was not able to secure enough food on a daily basis. He slowly lost weight until he reached a Body Mass Index (BMI) that was fatal. To test this hypothesis, we calculated his energy expenditure and compared this to his caloric intake. To assess his energy expenditure, we predicted the basal metabolic rate (BMR) of McCandless using a regression equation developed by the World Health Organization for young adult humans, age18-29. His BMR was adjusted to reflect his physical activity level—hunting and gathering—as defined by WHO criteria. McCandless’s caloric intake was estimated from his detailed 113-day food journal. In the end, a day-by-day comparison of his energy expenditure (BMR) and his caloric intake showed a consistent caloric deficit, i.e. weight loss. By Day 113, his Body Mass Index (BMI) had dropped into the range of 13 kg/m2, a level considered incompatible with life. It is believed he died on that same day."

Chris does mention that he gets ill toward the end of July (07.30.92: "Extremely weak. Fault of pot. seed,"), but this was not the cause of his death.

It is possible, like any severely emaciated person, that his withered and dying organs simply could not handle what little sustenance those seeds provided. But he would not have died from his inability to digest this food.

Christopher McCandless died after 113 days in the wild, not because of toxic seeds/mold/what have you as Krakauer adamantly states, but because he could not meet his caloric needs.

When his body was found, Chrisopher McCandless weight 67 pounds.

Again, I cannot express my severe love and admiration toward McCandless. I cannot look at a picture of him without feeling as if my soul has been torn away, and because of this hero worship (which he would not have wanted, which he never wanted) I have to mention the lies of the Krakuer book.

It still is a moving tale, but to warp the facts about what happened is inexcusable.

This was an interesting book about not only Chris McCandless's tragic and unnecessary death, but about how someone's romantic view of nature can blind them to its harsh reality.

I am a fan of Jon Krakauer and this did not dissapoint. Interested view into the mind of the

This book was very interesting to read It followed this guys journey into the wild.It followed his journey living in an abandon school bus and how he survived for days with his knowledge of the land.No one is sure what happened to him at the end. A very Tragic story you feel the pain for the family who lost him.You can also tell from the story he was not in the right frame of mind and he brought this on himself.

A great supplement to the movie. I highly recommend both!!!

Excellent account of a tragic event. Krakauer manages to make it compelling reading even as the outcome is known in advance. Very thoroughly researched and presented with stories from the people who knew McCandless.

Good detective work in picing everything together. Stubborness is not a virtue.

krakauer is one of my favorite writers and i love his writing style. i like how the book explores the human psyche, why people would want to do things like chris mccandless did, and does an excellent job of researching many aspects of the case.

I really enjoyed this book. Well written good insights.

Jon Krakauer is an excellent writer. I really felt as if I got to know Chris McCandless and I have since saught out Krakauer's other books. One of those "can't put it down" books.

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