Rating: 
Summary: Do Not Pass Judgement On This Book!
Review: Obviously this book strikes some sort of cord with a large and varied audience. With the amount of reviews written about this book, people who read it feel compelled to share their thoughts about it, be they positive or negative. This is not a novel. This is not a biography. This is not a simple story with a beginning, middle, and end. Do not expect to put this book down and not be kept constantly thinking about it. This book cannot be held merely within its front and back cover. If all you want to read is a story that either makes you happy or sad, go to your local grocery store and pick up a Harlequin Romance.Given some of the reactions to this book, it seems that many people are reading this after "Into Thin Air". That book was autobiographical and cathartic. Krakaeur reiterates his reasons for writing are part of a more personal struggle to figure out what went wrong and how he might best tell the world about it both from a subjective and objective standpoint. Krakauer was on Mount Everest. He experienced that journey. He did not experience the journey of Chris McCandless, and furthermore he does not act as though he did. I went to Emory while Chris McCandless was there. I did not know him or even of him, although a friend or two may have had a class with him. Once I heard of him and his exodus into the Alaskan wilderness, I was fascinated with the mystery of his life and his death. It upsets me that many readers think Krakaeur is turning McCandless into a hero and holding him up on a pedastel as someone who chose to be free and lived life as it should be lived. While a reader may choose to interpret McCandless this way, Krakaeur does not say this! Krakaeur's own fascination with the sheer determination and sense of free will that McCandless embodies is quite evident, so much so that he felt so strongly as to write a book about it. On the one hand, Krakaeur does his best to investigate the facts of McCandless' odyssey. Where did he go, when did he go there, how did he get there, and what did he do while he was there. This is investigative journalism: piecing together bits of random information from all sorts of characters to put the puzzle together. Krakaeur does his best to give as brutally honest and objective of a tale as he can. What seems more controversial than this method of storytelling is Krakaeur's quest for understanding why McCandless chose to go forth "Into the Wild". He asks the same questions as the readers (and not to forget the McCandless family): What did he want to learn? What did he abhor about society and why? What did he think true freedom was? Where did he get these ideas? What was he trying to prove, if anything at all? Did he really think he would survive and if he did, what then would he do? By delving into the writings and conversations of Chris McCandless, Krakauer attempts to answer some of these questions. He does not claim to know anything for certain. He offers some insights as drawn from both personal and historical anecdotes. Why does anyone try and test their limits? Krakauer shows the reader that perhaps no one knows exactly what they are trying to find out and the journey that develops is a creation of this confusion. It is this entity, the creation itself that is both the question and the answer. The reactions that the reader has from this book are almost as important as what is actually written. Whatever it makes you question and feel, be glad that someone made you think. I seriously doubt anyone can read this book and not have an opinion. Every aspect of this book is a voyage of discovery: for the reader, the writer, and the subject himself.
Rating: 
Summary: If Chris only lived to tell his tale!
Review: In April, 1992, 24-year-old Chris McCandless, a honors graduate of Emory University and former resident of Annadale, Virginia, decides to take off on his own into the wilds of Alaska after living the life of a vagabond throughout the United States for almost 2 years. Unfortunately his lone adventure proves fatal and his decomposed body and belongings are found in an old schoolbus far from a location in which someone might have learned of his travails. INTO THE WILD recreates the story of Chris McCandless. It begins from the discovery of his body and works backward, as the author decribes not only Chris's background and family, but also his pyche. Not unlike other dreamers, such as Tolstoy, Thoreau, and even the book's author Jon Krakauer, Chris (who changes his name to Alex) follows his dream. Being completely alone with the harsh realities of nature is often looking death in the face. Krakauer compares Chris to other men in the past who have also met their demise alone in the wild. Krakauer also takes the opportunity, since this is his book, to tell of his own adventure alone in the wild. Whether the reader admires Chris for his idealism or berates him for his craziness, Krakauer's book makes for fascinating reading.
Rating:
Summary: Into the Wild Summary
Review: Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild is the story of a young man named Chris McCandless who in April 1992 hitchhiked to Alaska and walked into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later his decomposed body was found by a party of moose hunters. The details of the story show that McCandless was mentally unsound: he traveled to the wilderness completely unprepared, he for no apparent reason vandalized several cabins in the vicinity of his location there, and when in dire straits did nothing to save himself. Chris McCandless traveled into the wild completely unprepared. He traveled with only a few things, like his clothes, like a gun, and a bag of rice. He got to Alaska by driving there and then abandoned it. He then stayed in a bus left by an exploration team in the 1930's. He changed his name, gave the entire balance of a $24,000 savings account to charity and burned all the cash in his wallet. He should have brought a compass and some equipment to help live in the wild like a more powerful gun, a tent, and a flare, and a cell phone. Chris McCandless trashed some cabins. He trashed everything that wasn't nailed down. All the lamps were broken broken and most of the windows. The bedding and mattresses had been pulled outside and thrown in a pile, ceiling boards yanked down, fuel cans had holes shot in them, and the food was all taken. Chris McCandless might have felt like he wanted to set the wilderness free. Destroying the cabins would be a way of doing that. Whenever the reason was I think it was wrong. Chris McCandless was in need of help. He knew that only one mile from the bus was an Alaskan Highway Patrol that could help him. But he just didn't try hard. He also could of fired his gun to let people know he was there and get help but he failed to do that. Chris McCandless died by failure to act. Chris was mentally ill. There is a big problem with a mentally ill person being out the middle of nowhere. He had no supervision, so he was going crazy. This is what I call a mentally ill person. He needed some help and he also need to stop and think about what he was doing.
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Summary: INTO THE WILD...INTO YOUR HEART
Review: This is a poignant, compelling narrative of an intelligent, intense, and idealistic young man, Chris McCandless, who cut off all ties to his upper middle class family, and reinvented himself as Alexander Supertramp, a drifter living out of a backpack, eking out a marginal existence as he wandered throughout the United States. A modern day King of the Road, McCandless ended his journey in 1992 in Alaska, when he walked alone into the wilderness north of Denali. He never returned. Krakauer investigates this young man's short life in an attempt to explain why someone who has everything going for him would have chosen this lifestyle, only to end up dead in one of the most remote, rugged areas of the Alaskan wilderness. Whether one views McCandless as a fool or as a modern day Thoreau is a question ripe for discussion. It is clear, however, from Krakauer's writing that his investigation led him to feel a strong, spiritual kinship with McCandless. It is this kindred spirit approach to his understanding of this young man that makes Krakauer's writing so absorbing and moving. Krakauer retraces McCandless' journey, interviewing many of those with whom he came into contact. What metamorphasizes is a haunting, riveting account of McCandless' travels and travails, and the impact he had on those with whom he came into contact. Krakauer followed McCandless' last steps into the Alaskan wilderness, so that he could see for himself how McCandless had lived, and how he had died. This book is his epitaph.
Rating:
Summary: Freedom and Wilderness
Review: This is the tragic stroy of Christopher McCandless, a man who was willing to sacrafice everything for a chance at experiencing life as few people ever do. One day Chris, or Alexander Supertramp as he preferred to be called, decided to cut all ties with the modern world and live in absolute freedom. Jon Krakauer beautifully narrates the reader through Alexander's ill-fated adventure that finally ended in an abandoned bus in the wilds of Alaska. Along the way, the reader is introduced to a collection of colorful people who have also sought escape from the trials of daily life. These glimpses help to put Alexander's uncommon desire to break from modern society into its proper perspective. Into the Wild is also a story about one family's love for their son, and the search for understanding and closure concerning his eventual death. In the process the reader is given great insight into the mind, and possible motives for his desire to escape. But, as we find out this is not just the story of one family, but, the story of many people and families that Alexander touched in his odyessy across America. Despite the fact that Alexander's quest cost him his life, I would dare to say that during those four brief months he felt more alive and experienced more than most people do in a entire lifetime. His warm smile on the opening page is a testament to the happiness, and contentment that he experienced in his self-imposed solitude. Finally, this is not merely a book about the tragedy of death, it is instead a celebration of nature and one mans quest to experience it.
Rating: 
Summary: Bland, Biased and Disappointing
Review: The book was a disappointment. It begins by leading you to believe that its a serious real adventure tale. However falls severly short of achieving that goal. He has tried to justify a waste of human life, which had no mission, no purpose in life. He has glorified the action of a completely confused person with a narrow perspective on life. I as not able to fathom Jon Krakauer's purpose of writing this book. Not that there should be one, but as a reader I would like to take back something from the reading. Is he trying to portray Chris as a hero ? (which he can't) Was he trying to justify his actions of throwing away his life in a country like America, where there is abundance of everything ? I failed to understand the purpose. I assume that Jon Krakauer, being a writer would have travelled to other parts of the worled, which are not so much endowed as the US. I am surprised that his worldview is so limited only to capture "American way of life" and generalising it. A major disappointment, after reading "Into This Air".
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Unforgettable
Review: There is little suspense (in the traditional sense of the word) in Krakauer's Into the Wild, as anyone who reads the synopsis or picks up the book instantly learns that it is the story of a young man, Chris McCandless, who ventures into the Alaskan Wilderness and who never gets out. Chris' body is found in an abandoned bus used by moose hunters as a makeshift lodge, and Krakauer skillfully attempts to retrace his steps in an effort both to understand what went wrong, and to figure out what made McCandless give away his money, his car, and head off into Denali National Forest in the first place. His book was one of the most haunting, unforgettable reads in recent years for me. I was mezmerized by passages in the author's other best-selling masterpiece Into Thin Air, such as the passage involving stranded and doomed guide Rob Hall, near the Everest summit, talking to his pregnant wife via satellite phone to discuss names for their unborn child. However, I was unprepared for the depths of emotion felt in reading Into the Wild - it literally kept me up at nights, not just reading but thinking about the book in the dark. Some reviewers criticized the book because they thought McCandless demonstrated a naive and unhealthy lack of respect for the Alaskan wilderness. This is no hike on the Appalachian Trail - Chris was literally dropped off by a trucker into the middle of nowhere, with no provision stores, guides, or means of assistance nearby at his disposal. He had a big bag of rice and a book about native plants, designed to tell him which plants and berries he could eat. "How could he have been so stupid?", they ask. Well, I certainly didn't feel compelled to give away my belongings, pack some rice and a Tolstoy novel and walk into the woods after reading the book, but the author does a remarkable job of exploring McCandless the person, including passages derived from interviews with the many poeple whose lives he touched in his odyssey as he drove and then hitch-hiked cross country from his well-to-do suburban home. Some of the more touching parts of the book involved tearful reminisces by some of these old aquaintances when they learned he had perished. Krakauer also throws in for good measure an illuminating passage about a similar death-defying climb that he foolishly attempted at about the same age as McCandless, with little training and preparation, providing insight into what makes a person attempt a dangerous climb or hike. He even tells several fascinating tales, all of them true, of other recreational hikers who were stranded in the wilderness. By the end of the book, I thought I understood McCandless' character, and I thought Krakauer was probably right in putting his finger on exactly what caused his death. I was moved by his plight regardless of his possible foolishness in venturing into Denali, and the final scenes involving Chris' family were emotionally devastating. You need not be an outdoorsman to appreciate it, and in fact unlike Into Thin Air the book is completely accessible to those who know nothing about the subject. I think this book is destined to become a classic.
Rating:
Summary: Want REAL adventure ?
Review: This is a very striking story about a very intelligent and talented man who happended to have mysterious survival problems. It's brilliant! , and it keeps you wild all the run.
Rating:
Summary: Captivating
Review: Krakauer, a renowned climber and outdoorsman himself, does more than just tell a story in this book--he examines the psychology, the motivation, for the actions of the protagonist. Why would he leave a large sum of money and almost certain material success behind in order to challenge nature? Also of note is that Krakauer does not glorify the decisions of the protagonist, rather, he tells the story objectively, appealing to reason, even empiricism. However, that having been said, the book certainly does not read like a scientific journal, more like an adventure thriller. As the events are recounted and pieced together, they assume a kind of mystery feel, as readers become compelled to know the outcome of the story. This book is a fascinating account written by a man who understands his element.
Rating:
Summary: A tragic story -- as told by one who understands
Review: After researching his story, Jon Krakauer came to understand why the subject of his unforgettable book "Into the Wild" hiked into oblivion in the first place. Krakauer understands the mentality of a foolish youth who would risk life and limb in the hopes of great adventure. He understands, as he relates, because he once was that youth. Krakauer is a master storyteller whose prose evokes vivid images not only of the last two years of Chris McCandless's life, but also of that strange breed of person who is drawn to Alaska to get as far away as possible from the constraints of life in the lower 48. McCandless's story is fascinating and Krakauer does a great service to his memory.
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