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Anchor
September 2007
On Sale: August 21, 2007
224 pages ISBN: 0307387178 EAN: 9780307387172 Paperback (reprint)
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Young Adult | Contemporary | Non-Fiction
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family
hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness
north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson
McCandless. 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. Four months later, his decomposed body was found
by a moose hunter. How McCandless came to die is the
unforgettable story of Into the
Wild.
Immediately after graduating from college
in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and
Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes
Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he
abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and
burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name,
Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and
belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw,
unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a
blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps
away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he
vanished into the wild.
Jon Krakauer constructs a
clarifying prism through which he reassembles the
disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an
interst that borders on obsession, he searches for the
clues to the dries and desires that propelled McCandless.
Digging deeply, he takes an inherently compelling mystery
and unravels the larger riddles it holds: the profound
pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the
allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain
cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers
and sons.
When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn
out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of
tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté,
pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death
wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from
being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings
McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows,
and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this
enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare
understanding--and not an ounce of sentimentality.
Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a
tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon
Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.
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