Jon Krakauer, American writer and journalist, was born in Corvallis, Oregon in 1954. He is also a mountain climber, his father exposed him to the craft when he was eight years old, lighting thus his lifelong passion. In 1977, a year after graduating from Hampshire College, Krakauer pioneered a new route to Devil's Thumb, a treacherous mountain in southeast Alaska. This feat was his first major foray into mountaineering. In 1996, Krakauer recounted an adventure on the Stikine Ice Cap, in which he used a route never attempted before, in one of his novels, Into the Wild. After his hike to the Devil's Thumb, Krakauer did not climb, but devoted himself to writing. Despite this, when Outside Magazine asks him to write an article about commercialism on Everest, he accepts without hesitation. In 1996, Krakauer signed up for the May expedition, unaware that the season would be so turbulent that it would claim twelve lives, four of whom were his teammates, in a murderous storm that overwhelms and devastates Everest. Fortunately, he manages to successfully climb and descend the mountain. H...