Rating: 
Summary: This should be required reading in high schools and colleges
Review: As a 23-year-old considering an adventurous move I can relate somewhat to Chris McCandless. This book was powerful and moving. Jon Kraukauer gives the reader insight into Chris's thoughts and motives. He discovers what an investigator couldn't, where Chris had been for two years and (most possibly) why. I felt that the added information on other individuals who had disappeared like Chris gave the reader an additional perspective to Chris and his journey. This book is sad and depressing but will make you look at your life and appreciate those around you. Thank you Jon Kraukauer for not letting Chris McCandless's life and death go unnoticed and misunderstood
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read!
Review: Read this fascinating book in 2 sittings..
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book about an ill-fated adventure
Review: A fine, although depressing, book about a very idealistic young man who ventures up to live in the wilds of Alaska, without any companions, food, equipment. A good scenario of the old "man vs. nature" theme
Rating: 
Summary: fascinating subject, drawn out too much
Review: Fascinating subject, but stretched too thin by
vaguely related information made more so by a
somewhat random, meandering approach. I was left
looking for more substance.
Much better if shortened or if additional
significant detail were added.
Rating:
Summary: Need For A Purpose
Review: Krakauer has effectively reconstructed the tragic tale of Chris McCandless' naive and fatal plunge into the Alaska winderness in search of his young man's need for a purpose. Death is often the catalyst of couriosity and this book does not dissapoint in it's complete analysis of when, how and possibly why McCandless died. Everyday young men and women set out on similar quests for understanding in unforgiving rural and urban windernesses. Most live to tell about it. Some, like McCandless, don't.
207 pages is quite long for this story that could have been told effectively in a series of magazine articles or as part of a collection of shorter writings. I would hope that McCandless's tragedy will serve as a guiding light for others who seek "the meaning of life" and those who think they are ready to tackle life on the road and/or the true wilderness.
Rating: 
Summary: The Mettle of the Nomad
Review: Krakouer is an astronomer who has saved a little known star from obscurity. The Great Ones are of course those who lived to tell the tale. They are Mellville and London and Hemingway. Adventurers will never die. But who is to say that the small victories or defeats in life are any less sublime than the Great conflicts and conquerings. Moby Dick and Call of the Wild, Into the Wild is not. It is about someone who was moved by the Great Spirit of Adventure. It is about someone who failed to survive the journey, but the chronicle of his attempt is worthy if for no other reason than to remind those of us with Nomad souls that the attempt must be made! Courage is the attempt, but behold! one must, we learn from Krakouer, not proceed without humility and wisdom, which aids survival so the attempt may be relished and pondered. Adventurers who die adventuring perish in their Labor of Love, and this is not necessarily a bad or tragic thing as the Bourgiouse multitudes would have us believe. But, as Krakouer lets us see thorugh his commentary, the rewards of surviving the quest are almost as great as undertaking the quest itself
Rating:
Summary: Reading _is_ the best way to travel
Review: As other reviewers have pointed out, this ingenious piece of non-fiction has the emotive and narrative impact of a novel. When I first picked it up, I thought, "Why would I want to read the story of such an obvious loser like Chris McCandless?" I ended up reading it in a single sitting.
From the moment McCandless blasts out of Atlanta 'til his final hours in Alaska, the reader rides shotgun, never truly prepared for the next stop. Krakauer exposes some of the most forbidding and exhilarating settings America has to offer, using the McCandless story as a frame for describing and detailing landscapes that most Americans experience only as roadside blur if they experience them at all.
McCandless is posthumously fortunate to have such a skillful and sensitive author tell his tale.
Krakauer is establishing himself in the great American tradition of Muir, Thoreau, and Abbey. I recommend this book without reservation
Rating:
Summary: AN AMAZING STORY
Review: This book tells a story that needs to be told. I thank Mr. Krakauer for bringing it to my attention. He tells it with the skill of a novelist
Rating:
Summary: Suprised, Intriguing, not depressing
Review: At firsrt I thought this account might be a depressing read about some suicidal nut who wandered off into the wilderness. Instead I found this book to be an interesting look at a man, who, while many consider him quite different, to have much more in common with some of this country's early hero's--Thoreau and Walden in particular. While I didn't understand his drive, and certainly found the demolition of the nearby cabins disturbing, it was an interesting, provacative account of a young man, a dream, and how that dream goes against so much of what is acceptable to society in general--and by pursing this dream was written off by so many, so quickly. Thank you, Jon Krakauer for bringing yet another tale of men and wilderness into our lives
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: This book has been one of the hardest to put down. Incredibly well-written, it take the reader not only on a journey of the life of Chris McCandless, but others like him, and the author himself. In many ways it will allow you to better understand yourself, and a part of the human mind that many of us bury.
The life of Chris McCandless is not only interesting and bewildering, but incredibly brave and respectful; and at the same time, very creepy, with some passages sending chills down your spine.
READ IT! You won't be dissapointed.
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