Rating: 
Summary: Lucid and pellucid!
Review: The lucid news of the death of Chris McCandless prevails in the first chapter, and this captures your imagination. It works, pretty well. It's quite a short novel and you can read it at ease. Jon has vividly painted a picture of Chris! However, it sounds little like a memoir.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written, but what's the point!
Review: Into the Wild was a good book to read. I read it in two days. It tells of Chris McCandlesses travels. In my opinon Krakauer writes the book for you to almost feel sorry for the kid. In my opinon the kid was not so smart. I mean he goes into the wilderness with lousy boots. Not enough food. I like camping and I'm afraid I might go do something like that. I don't want to die and I am sure that Chris didn't want to die either. But all i am saying is that Chris should have been more prepared. Also I wonder if Chris really did vadalize those cabins in the state park. I don't think he did unless some how his phase of mind changed dramaticly. I have also wondered if Chris knew those seeds were posion. I wonder if he committed suicide. I wonder a lot of things about the book. I feel like I know Chris. I was crying at the end of the book. And I'm crying write know. I wish he had been more prepared. If he had just had a good map he could have walked write out of the woods. I thin! k that he was going back home to Virgina for good to go back to his parents. It was a good book though.
Rating:
Summary: The rich biography this tragic young man deserved
Review: For a change, a book of great merit has made the best seller list and has stayed there for a while. I read this book in virtually one sitting--it is that compelling and well-written, and also that compact. This is a book for anyone who appreciates the two-edged quality of nature--its appeal to the discontents of civilization like Thoreau and "the red tooth and claw" aspects it presents to writers like Jack London, both of whom appealed to the book's protagonist, Chris McCandless, a.k.a. "Alexander Supertramp." The author's citations from them and other authors at the head of each chapter are well selected, and warrant re-reading after finishing each chapter and the book itself. Clearly, Jon Krakauer became amazing absorbed in this story, and did some marvelous detective work in reconstructing what happened to Chris and what led to his demise, going all the way back to childhood and proceeding through the cause of his untimely death. When I read t! he initial chapters about how Chris's body was found by hunters in a relatively isolated spot in Alaska, what struck me was the tragedy and meaninglessness of his death, and the loneliness of his last days. (These feelings were only compounded for me as the author demonstrated how close Chris was to several well-provisioned cabins in the wilderness and to a cable car which could have carried him across an otherwise unfordable river which blocked his egress to civilization.) But this book in some ways offers redemption for Chris and for those who remain behind, insofar as it gives meaning to both his life and death. His largely estranged family was obviously very cooperative with the author, and on first reflection, I was almost amazed at how cooperative they must have been, since the picture of their relationship with Chris--especially that of his parents--is not terribly positive. But on balance, they too must have recognized that Krakauer's portrait of Chris would help g! ive some transcendent meaning to both his life and death.
Rating: 
Summary: Disapointing and rambling, with a few great moments
Review: If you liked "Into Thin Air" this book is worth a try, but it is not nearly as cohesive, spectacular, or absorbing. Krakauer feels the need to reiterate the dramatic far too frequently... "McCandless was a smart kid, but not smart enough for the tough Alaskan wilderness." Most of the book is filler, stories culled about other failed solo expeditions, and even a self-aggrandizing chapter about the author's own ascent of an Alaskan peak.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for anyone considering walking "Into the Wild"
Review: I can understand why Chris McCandless turned away from his parents. I can understand why he wanted to be his own person and live off the land. But to go off into the wilderness of Alaska so unprepared was not the thinking of a rational person. How could someone so smart, have been so stupid?
Rating:
Summary: Great, moving book.
Review: Just like "Into Thin Air" Krakauer writes about someone willing to give up his life for his dreams. It is a poignant, heartbreaking story about Chris's journey for a different kind of existence. Not many people have the guts to just toss life as we know it aside. He knew the risks and yet decided to do it anyway. Was he a genius? A little bit stupid? Perhaps both...
Rating:
Summary: Absorbing, read it in one sitting....
Review: I read a good number of reviews before reading the book. I must say that I am hard pressed to understand the outrage many of the readers vented towards McCandless. Sure, much of his idealism smells to me of the standard pc stance - racism and enviromental destruction being of the highest order of evil - and his Tolstoy/London/Thoreau synthesis contrived, postured, inauthentic, I was left still with a feeling of awe and admiration for the man. In a culture where most people watch 40 hours of TV a week and are generally afraid to be alone, I found McCandless a refreshing shot in the arm. As with the common prejudice of our era, McCandless is viewed as one of the "priviledge" and therefore held in a different light. It is hard for me to see how he wronged the world for forsaking his material advantages for a life on the road. Fact is, he hit the road to shake of the softening affects of his affluent background and enormously wealthy host country for a life of primative hardship. It took real balls, guts, and courage. Finally, if you remember, Siddhartha Gautma Buddha was a Brahmin's son, but also renounced his advantages. McCandless was that sort of idealist and rebel. History is replete with characters like him and not of the common sort of people who critique him.
Rating:
Summary: Well-written and terribly true
Review: The author states in his introduction that he pursued this story because he identified with Chris McCandless and that's quite apparent in the overall feel of the book. Krakauer's treatment of the misguided(?) young man is sensitive and truthful. I'm glad he pursued this story and made so many of its details available to the reader.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting and fascinating.
Review: Yeah, I know Krakauer is a writer of magazine articles...but he has the heart of a great storyteller. I bought this book after finishing his tale of Everest and was not disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Really gets into the mind of one man who escaped society...
Review: Like the Beat Generation's "On the Road" and the Baby Boomer's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", John Krakauer's "Into The Wild" gets into the motivations for leaving what one is most familiar with, and ceding to the ways of the road, and in Mc Candless' case, the ways of the wild. And "Into The Wild" will get into the collective heart and mind of Generation X, as these other books did for their generations. Mc Candless may have been carless, and he may too have been a genius. But, these character traits seem to be dwarfed by the story of Mc Candless' inner turmoil and the turmoil now suffered by the fanily he abandoned.
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