In January 1993, Outside magazine published an article by Jon Krakauer about the death of Christopher McCandless, a young Emory graduate who burned his money, cut ties with his family, and went on a three-month "Alaskan Odyssey" that ended when his body was discovered in the bush near Healy, Alaska in September 1992. Why he took this journey and how died was the subject of Krakauer's article.
The attention garnered by the article in Outside magazine spurred Krakauer to embark on a 3-year journey during which he obsessively researched the story of Chris McCandless. Krakauer interviewed McCandless' friends and family, and pored over McCandless' journal entries, photographs, and the...