Jon Krakauer was born in 1954 in Brookline, Massachusetts and grew up in Corvallis, Oregon. His father, Lewis Krakauer, a doctor and ambitious mountain climber, introduced Krakauer to mountaineering when he was eight. After graduating from Hampshire College in 1976, Krakauer worked as a carpenter and salmon fisherman, travelled, and went mountain-climbing. Krakauer's articles on his extreme mountaineering experiences appeared in publications including Outside, Architectural Digest, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Additionally, Krakauer published a book of photographs titled Iceland: Land of the Sagas.
Krakauer's first major literary success was the 1996 book Into the Wild,...
