Over the years, Alaska has been a magnet for intrepid characters who trek into the bush, never to reappear. Krakauer succeeds in capturing McCandless' unique personality even as he establishes links between his subject and a loose fraternity of adventurers who also took to the wild in search of meaning and identity. He comes across as engaging yet ultimately unapproachable in his brash pursuit of raw, austere experience. While prone to introspective musings on the meaning of life, the well-read McCandless could just as easily knock back a few shots of Jack Daniel's and entertain his new-found friends with his piano playing. While McCandless viewed nature and solitude as the keys to fulfillment, he profoundly touched those he encountered on the road prior to his fatal journey to Alaska. In his own mind, if nowhere else, the terra would thereby remain incognita.' But Chris, with his idiosyncratic logic, came up with an elegant solution to this dilemma: He simply got rid of the map. 'In 1992, however, there were no more blank spots on the map-not in Alaska, not anywhere. 'In coming to Alaska, McCandless yearned to wander uncharted country, to find a blank spot on the map,' Krakauer writes.

Krakauer, a writer for Outside magazine who obviously shares McCandless' wanderlust, explains often esoteric inclinations in a clear, revealing way. In an increasingly crowded world, it was difficult for McCandless to find the physical isolation he sought, but his inward journey was more important than his external surroundings. He rides the rails, canoes to Mexico on a whim and survives it all on nothing more than wits, luck and an ever-present bag of rice. For McCandless, rejecting mainstream society doesn't mean publishing a zine.

The same determination that helped him excel as a high school cross-country star enables him to survive the vagabond lifestyle he embraces after college. Instead of coming across as just an antisocial misfit, McCandless emerges as a disciplined, uncompromising individual guided by an earnest brand of asceticism. Krakauer's skill as an investigative reporter is impressive, but it is his ability to reveal McCandless' inner motives that makes Into the Wild such an intriguing book. With the demise of McCandless already revealed, Krakauer concentrates on the forces that drove the devotee of Thoreau, Tolstoy and Jack London to the icy environs of Alaska and, ultimately, to his death. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter.' He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. 'His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. 'In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. The text on the dust jacket of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild makes it clear that the thread of suspense running through this compelling book isn't necessarily tied to the fate of its subject. The sudden shift of behavior that McCandless demonstrates-and its severity-suggests more was at work here than just a young man looking for adventure.Why did Chris McCandless turn his back on society and disappear into the wild? Krakauer isn't willing to explore what seems to be another, more obvious possibility: that McCandless was mentally ill. It's an interesting argument: is death the ultimate arbitrator of what is rational and what is mere human folly? If Mark Twight, for example, had fallen off some icy face at a young age, would he be viewed, like McCandless, as just another naive kid who courted his own end? Had the enterprise proved fatal, as perhaps it should have, Krakauer wonders if his own eulogy would have been any different from McCandless'. Krakauer's adventure on the Devil's Thumb makes for nail-bitting reading. Interrupting the narrative to inject himself into the story is a risk, but one that pays off. Moreover, Krakauer includes a chapter from his own life-an ambitious but misguided attempt to summit the unclimbed north face of the Devil's Thumb in the Alaskan Wild. Krakauer can't help but admire the audacity and commitment that McCandless demonstrated. Stories of young men vanishing into the wilderness are not new (ie, the Herzog film Grizzly Man), but author Jon Krakauer makes this a potent book by making it intensely personal.

Into the wild book jon krakauer