Jon Krakauer was born in 1954 in Brookline, Massachusetts, to Carol Ann (née Jones) and Lewis Joseph Krakauer. The third of five children, Krakauer grew up in Corvallis, Oregon. His father, Lewis Krakauer, a doctor and ambitious mountain climber, introduced Krakauer to mountaineering when he was eight. Krakauer's father placed immense pressure on his son to achieve high academic success. Krakauer graduated from Hampshire College in 1976 and married climber Linda Mariam Moore in 1980. He then divided his time between Colorado, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest, working as a carpenter and salmon fisherman, traveling around, and mountain-climbing as much as possible. Krakauer recorded his extreme mountaineering experiences in publications such as Outside, Architectural Digest, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Additionally, Krakauer published a book of photographs entitled Iceland: Land of the Sagas.
Krakauer's first major literary success was the 1996 book Into the Wild, adapted from an article written for Outside magazine. The book tells the story of Chris McCandless, a 22-year-old who gave up his possessions to live on his own in the remote wilderness of Alaska, and died of starvation after 113 days. The book has been translated into 30 languages, and in 2007 was adapted into a film directed by Sean Penn.
In 1996, Krakauer joined an expedition to climb Mt. Everest. Tragically, a storm claimed the lives of four of Krakauer's five teammates as they descended from the peak. Following this tragedy, Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, criticizing the commercialization of Mt. Everest. The book became a #1 New York Times bestseller, won numerous awards, and was adapted into a television movie. In 1999, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Krakauer an Arts and Letters Award for Literature.
In 2003, Krakauer expanded his journalistic writing with Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, which examines the nature of religious zealotry through the lens of Mormon fundamentalism, a common religion in the area where Krakauer grew up. Since the release of Under the Banner of Heaven, Krakauer has released numerous books on a variety of controversial figures and topics, including Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (2009), about a football-star-turned-army-hero; Three Cups of Deceit (2011), exposing humanitarian figure Greg Mortensen as a fraud; and Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (2015), exploring how colleges handle cases of sexual assault on campus.
En enero de 1993, Jon Krakauer publicó un artículo en la revista Outside sobre la muerte de Chris McCandless, un joven graduado de Emory que había donado todo su dinero a obras de caridad, se había deshecho de todas sus pertenencias, había...
In January 1993, Jon Krakauer published an article in Outside magazine about the death of Chris McCandless, a young Emory graduate who had donated all of his money to charity, gotten rid of all his belongings, changed his name, and, in April 1992,...
Into Thin Air is Jon Krakauer's third novel, adapted from an article he published in Outside magazine following the tragic events of May 1996 on the slopes of Mt. Everest. At the time of its publication in 1997, Into Thin Air garnered widespread...
Jon Krakauer's nonfiction book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith was first published in July 2003. The text follows two parallel storylines: the founding and development of the early Mormon church in the nineteenth century, and...
