Rating: 
Summary: WHEN NATURE CALLS
Review: Christ McCandless was a smart young man who was well thought of. He also was a bit of a loner with a passion for the great outdoors and all the adventures that came with it. Upon graduating from college he gave all of his money to charity and wandered the United States with nothing more than a backpack. He lived in the desert and canoed through Mexico before setting his sights on his ultimate adventure : hiking in Alaska and living off of the Arctic lands.His lust for nature will ultimately result in tragedy. However, his story is more than his wanderings and death. His story is also his motivations and his passions. Jon Krakauer attempts to dissect McCandless and his journey. The author vehemently defends the memory of McCandless from those that would call him insane or suicial. He tries to paint the picture of an adventurous spirit. The result is a captivating book. Krakauer gives insight into McCandless without insulting his memory by prentending to know exactly what the young man was thinking. The author does an admirable job of showing how the vagabond tendencies in Chris lead to heartache in many of those that cared for him, his family in particular. He gives frank details on McCandless' insensitivity towards his family without villifying him. There are two things that keep this from being a five star account. First, Krakauer spends a little too much time defending Chris. He often refues to entertain the notion that some the decisions that McCandless made were uninformed if not foolish. Second, he often strays from the tale surrounding McCandless a little too far. While the tales of other unfortunate adventures are not without merit, there is a thing as too much. At points these stories often interrupt the flow of the book and can leave the reader a little anxious to get back to the primary subject. Perfection is not obtainable with every novel, but Krakauer doesnt miss the mark by much here. Despite some minor flaws he tells an enthralling tale. He entertains and moves the reader with this accont of a life lost.
Rating: 
Summary: Much more than an adventure yarn
Review: This is an outstanding work of literature, one of the most wrenching, most provocative books I have ever read. But it is NOT and adventure story per se. If you are expecting something like Krakauer's other bestseller, "Into Thin Air," you will be disappointed. Yes, "Into the Wild" tells the story of a young man who went seeking adventure in the wilds of Alaska and did not survive. But Krakauer isn't really interested in telling a testosterone-soaked cliffhanger. Rather, he sets out to explore the inner life of a very complicated, very idealistic, very intense young man. This is a very sophisticated work. It is a book about ideas more than actions. Krakauer was going after big literary game in this book, and he pulled it off brilliantly. This book is actually about longing and loss. It's about our historical fascination with the ever-receding American frontier, and how that's influenced our national character. That is why the detours Krakauer takes to tell the stories of seekers other than McCandless are an essential part of the book. These detours are certainly not mere filler, as other reviewers have complained (or, rather, they will only be considered filler by readers who want a rip-roaring adventure tale, and nothing more). Actually I thought the chapters in which the author goes off on tangents to write about Everett Ruess, and especially his own adventure on Alaska's Devils Thumb, were some of the most powerful parts of the book. The prose in these sections is beautifully crafted. Reading some of Krakauer's passages, I felt like I was intoxicated. He is that good a writer. I have read this book 4 times now, and I have gained a better appreciation of the author's tremendous skill and subtlety with each reading. If you are a serious reader with an interest in nature or the American West, I can't recommend this book strongly enough. It will stick with you for a long, long time.
Rating:
Summary: A moving sad story
Review: Chris McCandless was an idealistic young man who ventured out into the wilderness alone, made a few mistakes and died. This doesn't seem like much of a story but Krakauer does a wonderful job of reconstructing the last years of McCandless's life and give some insight into this man's motivations. I personally don't think McCandless was a crazy loner or anything like that. He was a very idealistic man who saw the purity in nature and wanted to be a part of it. This certainly has some appeal to me. I found myself identifying with McCandless quite a bit. I've often felt the urge to split and wander about for a few months. He was quite personable with the people he met on his travels, and he touched the lives of several of the poeple he met. It is tragic that he died, if he had only had a simple map of the area he would have survived his excursions and been able to return to his life. It seems like he was ready to re-enter the world when he died. Krakauer tells the stories of other men who have been similarity affected by nature and have traveled into the wild never to return. Despite the tragic ending, I found the book inspiring and I do certainly admire Chris McCandless's courage for leaving behind everything and venturing out for what can only described and a personal adventure with an uncertain ending. I'd highly recommend this book to anybody, my tiny piece of advice for anybody considering this sort of travel is to get a good map, good boots, a warm coat, and be prepared for anything
Rating:
Summary: unbelievable and yet entirely realistic
Review: Krakauer did an amazing job of bringing Chris, a ordinary man with problems we can all identify with, to the awareness of the public. A lot of people take what they have for granted and forget that not everyone is living a priveleged life. A great deal of society in oblivious to people like Chris in this country and there are others out there. I personally could relate to Chris regarding his need to seek independence, I believe we would all be kidding ourselves if we couldn't identify a slight connection. I felt that Krakauer delivered a book that could really touch the reader because of the pure and simple honesty it conveyed. He did not hold back anything and was even comfortable to share his own personal ordeal, which besides coming out alive sounds a lot like Chris McCandless's story. I feel the people who wrote in to personally attack Chris were far too judgemental. We may not understand why Chris made the choices he did, but he deserves respect like every other human being. And unless you walk in the other persons shoes, you are not capable or entitled to pass judgement. The novel was excellent and it was a real race to get to the end. So I would definetly recommend it to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Absorbing, probing, fascinating, tragic
Review: When faced with the opportunity to be sprung from prison and escape the death penalty, Socrates told Crito that the really important thing was not to live, but to live well. As citizens of a wealthy and prosperous nation, most of us have the luxury of free time and can ponder Socrates' essential question: "What is a life well lived?" Many of us try to apply that question to the way we raise our children, to the books we choose to read, to how we choose our friends, and to how we recreate. Jon Krakauer tells the story in Into the Wild of Chris McCandless, an Emory University graduate, who decided to explore Socrates' question by eschewing all the material luxuries of his life and experience life at its rawest. I found this story to be the quintessential American story. Chris McCandless wants to be free. He wants to be pure. He wants to live life over the edge. And he does. He travels, first in a car he abandons and then by foot and water over large expanses of the USA, making friends who deeply love him, who can't forget him, who are deeply affected by him, until he decides to live in the wilds of Alaska. It's in Alaska that the stakes of Chris's life become mortal and the story becomes tragic. Suddenly each choice Chris makes, whether dietary, navigational, or philosophical has consequences that are enlarged by the conditions he lives in. As readers, we begin to see a magnification of our own lives, how our deeds determine us, just as Chris McCandless's determine him and his fate. Krakauer's research is comprehensive. The story is compelling. Krakauer's inclusion of his own experience as a young man in Alaska deftly parallels McCandless's and helps deepen and reinforce the idea that having the freedom to pursue one's dreams to their ultimate can be exhilirating, painful, and dangerous. I consider Krakauer one of our country's very finest writers and recommend this book very highly as a first-rate narrative and a probing philosophical exploration written in lucid, taut, accessible prose.
Rating: 
Summary: Ridiculous
Review: This book is about one of the dumbest blokes I have ever heard of. He wants to be all "Walden" or out there. Althought the whole time it rants about him leaving all the comforts of "normal" society behind, he relies on quickie marts to get his drinking water and puts it in a mass produced milk jug. Not only is kid a complete hypocrite, but he is a foolish boy who hasnt yet grown up. It honestly is a book about a complete fool. Somehow he has been glorified, because of his idiocy. I just don't buy it. Why did I give it 2 stars? Because it was entertaining reading about how utterly ignorant this kid was.
Rating: 
Summary: Searching for Some Answers to the Big Question
Review: Chris McCandless was a well-read, intelligent, sentient young man with a lot going for him. So why did he travel from Atlanta to Alaska with little more than rice and paperback? Mountaineer and journalist Jon Krakauer tries to answer this question in this book of little more than 200 pages of terse text buoyed by the author's personal opinions and somewhat supported by those whose path Alex (once taking flight Chris assumed the name Alex Supertramp -- the Alex apparently taken from a Tolstoy work and the Supertramp never explained) crossed. The story is very compelling: Chris, clearly an individual who thinks (some would say) too much, sets off on his great adventure upon college graduation without much more than a word to his parents and sister (in fact, he never contacts his parents again). In an effort to remove the shackles of materialism, he gives all his savings (close to $25,000) to charity (ironically, a charity to prevent hunger) and heads west in his old yellow Datsun. He manages fairly well (and he had been prone to solo sojourns in the past) and eventually loses his car out west. He burns the rest of his money and relies on his feet and the kindness of strangers for travel. Almost two years of travelling and vagabond living later (he did maintain some employment including a brief stint at a fast food restaurant and farm work in South Dakota), Chris heads into the Alaskan Wilderness with his paperbacks, a rifle, a .22, some ammunition, a book on poisonous plants/berries, and some rice. An idealist searching for the meaning of life (and not the lack thereof), Chris was an avid reader of the ascetic Tolstoy, Jack London, Boris Pasternak, and Thoreau. Clearly, these thinkers influenced McCandless's thinking, fed his adventurous spirit and probably added more questions than answers to his desire to decipher what this life is all about. Unfortunately, we will never know what Chris' conclusions after four months in the wilderness were, although there are some clues in his brief, but poignent journal entries. Krakauer does a decent job in the telling of the story, although the writing is somewhat clipped, tenses occasionally confusing, and the feel throughout is more that of a newspaper article than a literary work--and this for me is the major weakness in this book. Additionally, the author spends two chapters telling about his adventures (and several others talking about other seekers/adventurers) in an effort to elucidate some of McCandless's motivations. This wasted space could have been better served giving more details of Chris' background. Little is said about his childhood or teenage years. Krakauer includes some of Chris' writings and shares some of the highlighted passages in the many books Chris read, but I somehow feel there could have been a lot more--high school or college papers, more interviews with friends and family. The major failing in the telling of this fascinating story is there is too much conjecture and not enough fact. Admittedly, some of this could likely not be helped considering the solitary nature of McCandless, but I still feel there was/is more to be told.
Nevertheless, I would recommend this book for the story itself. It is moving, heartbreaking, in some ways uplifting (see Chris' comments alongside Pasternak's prose from Zhivago toward the end of the book to see what I mean), and definitely worth the telling.
Rating:
Summary: Into the Wild was an insightful look at Chris McCandless
Review: Into the Wild is an insiring true story of a young man's adventures, and unfortunate death, in (where else?) the wild. Jon Krakauer was an outdoorsman, which enabled him to empathize with Chris McCandless and give the reader insight into McCandless' mind. Krakauer's experience as a reporter is evident in his concise, detailed writing, yet he manages to make the book more than a collection of facts about a young man's death in the wilderness. Even if the reader does not agree with some of McCandless' radical ideas, he will understand them. McCandless began his journey into the wild soon after his college graduation, journeying westward from Atlanta. After his truck died, he continued his adventures on foot and by hitchhiking. His life came to an end as a result of starvation in the Alaska wilderness. The information used to write this story was gathered from people who knew McCandless, including his family, people with whom he stayed between adventures, and the truck driver who was the last person to see him alive. Although it is tragic, Into the Wild is a fascinating story and one is left with a feeling of awe at the power of nature and the courage of one man to embrace it.
Rating:
Summary: Lonesome pines in snow
Review: This is an excellent read! But more than that, it is one of most moving and human stories you will ever have the pleasure of encountering by an author such as Krakauer, a splendid naturalist with a true ear for epiphany. Krakauer has a style unlike any writer this side of the twentieth century, and makes his way honestly and earnestly into the psyche of the reader, unexpectedly portraying a very real and true, almost unspeakable understanding of the young adventurer, Chris McCandless. If you are American, you absolutely must read this book! It should be cannonized.
Rating:
Summary: Ridiculous
Review: This book is about one of the dumbest blokes I have ever heard of. He wants to be all "Walden" or out there. Althought the whole time it rants about him leaving all the comforts of "normal" society behind, he relies on quickie marts to get his drinking water and puts it in a mass produced milk jug. Not only is kid a complete hypocrite, but he is a foolish boy who hasnt yet grown up. It honestly is a book about a complete fool. Somehow he has been glorified, because of his idiocy. I just don't buy it. Why did I give it 2 stars? Because it was entertaining reading about how utterly ignorant this kid was.
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