About+the+Author

__**About the Author**__
By: Brittany Damschroder Jon Krakauer is the author of __Into Thin Air__, which is a memoir about himself and everyone else who was climbing Mount Everest when the huge storm hit the mountain in May 1996. Before writing this book, Krakauer wrote an article in Outside Magazine on what had happened on the mountain. He later took the article and turned it into a book. This memoir received many awards including #1 New York Times Bestseller, “Book of the Year” by Time Magazine, and was one of the "Best Books of the Year" by the New York Times Book Review. __Into Thin Air__ was so popular that according to Book Browse, a website that recommends the most recently published books, it was translated into 24 different languages.

Krakauer went on the Mount Everest expedition for an assignment from Outside Magazine to report on the growing commercialization of the mountain (Krakauer). Not only was he climbing the mountain for information for the magazine, he was also doing it because he enjoys mountain climbing and he is an experienced climber. Krakauer has been mountain climbing since the age of eight, when his father first introduced him to it. Since then, he has climbed the Stikine Icecap and the Arrigatch Peaks in Alaska, Devils Thumb, the Patagonian Andes, and Mount Everest.

It is evident in the book that he was one of the most skilled climbers other than the guides. When they were climbing the mountain, Krakauer writes, “I was at the head of the line…fifteen minutes in front of guide Mike Groom…” (Krakauer 125). He shows this quality again when he was “The first person to reach the tents on May 8…” (Krakauer 151). Besides __Into Thin Air__, Krakauer has written some other books including, __Iceland__, __Eiger Dreams__, __Into the Wild__, and __Under the Banner of Heaven__, most of which are non-fiction.

//__**Citations:**__// "Author Biography." __Book Browse__. 01 Sept. 2003. 24 Feb. 2008

<[|http://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm?author_number=123>.]

Krakauer, Jon. __Into Thin Air__. Villard, New York: Jon Krakauer, 1997. 1-291.

Scott, Alastair. "Fatal Attraction." __New York Times on the Web__. 18 May 1997. 27 Feb. 2008 

**__Blog Entry: Real or Fiction?__**
By: Brittany Damschroder

Sometimes is hard to define what non-fiction is. What does a non-fiction book consist of? According to WordiQ, an online dictionary, non-fiction is, “A truthful account of representation of a subject which is composed of facts.” One of the types of non-fiction literature is memoirs. A memoir consists of a person telling the story of something that has happened to them. An example of a memoir is __Into Thin Air,__ by Jon Krakauer, which is a personal account of the events that took place up to and during a freak snow storm that occurred while he was climbing Mount Everest. Even though this book is categorized as non-fiction, some parts of the story almost seem like they were made up. For example, when the climbers were just getting to Base Camp for the first time, Krakauer describes the ‘bathroom arrangements’ at the camp:

“The three or four stone toilets in the village were literally overflowing with excrement. The latrines were so abhorrent that most people, Nepalese and Westerners alike, evacuated their bowels outside of the open ground, wherever the urge struck. Huge stinking piles of human feces lay everywhere; it was impossible not to walk in it. The river of snowmelt meandering through the center of the settlement was an open sewer.” (Krakauer 53).

Normally when you read about human excrement laying everywhere around your campsite, it’s in a fictional story. You wouldn’t ever really think that this kind of thing really happens. No one necessarily thinks that mountain climbers go to the bathroom in one big spot on the mountain where they pitch their tents, but if you think about it, where else would they go? One other scene of the story is when a guy that was in a different tour group from Krakauer, fell 2,000 feet into a glacial crevasse. In this example, maybe it isn’t that the readers don’t believe this could happen to a climber, but rather they don’t want to believe that it can and does happen.

//__**Citations:**__// Krakauer, Jon. __Into Thin Air__. Villard, New York: Jon Krakauer, 1997. 1-291.