Classic Krakauer
"Mark Foo's Last Ride," "After the Fall," and Other Essays from the Vault
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3.3 • 4 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Spanning an extraordinary range of subjects and locations, these ten gripping essays show why Jon Krakauer is considered a standard-bearer of modern journalism.
His pieces take us from a horrifying avalanche on Mount Everest to a volcano poised to obliterate a big chunk of Seattle; from a wilderness teen-therapy program run by apparent sadists to an otherworldly cave in New Mexico, studied by NASA to better understand Mars; from the notebook of one Fred Beckey, who catalogued the greatest unclimbed mountaineering routes on the planet, to the last days of legendary surfer Mark Foo.
Bringing together work originally published in such magazines as The New Yorker, Outside, and Smithsonian—all rigorously researched, vividly written, and marked by an unerring instinct for storytelling and scoop—Classic Krakauer powerfully demonstrates the author’s ambivalent love affair with unruly landscapes and his relentless search for truth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Krakauer (Missoula), whose writing has often depicted intrepid endeavors, revisits his early journalistic career and initial forays into his chosen subject with this outstanding collection. Depicting adventures of climbing, surfing, and caving, the essays address why some people are drawn to pursue dangerous feats and to push themselves until something inevitably goes wrong. Krakauer takes the reader along on journeys that are alternately thrilling and terrifying, via direct yet illustrative prose, as when he describes how a daring surfer "carves a tight, elegant arc as the wave curls over and tries to swallow him a roaring, spinning tornado, spewing foam, bearing down fast on the blind side." The most moving pieces are an admiring profile of eccentric American alpinist Fred Beckey, "the original climbing bum" known for bold first ascents, an obsessive need to climb, and a "quirky, enduring magnificence" and a sorrowful, anger-inducing account of how teenager Aaron Bacon perished in a degrading, boot camp style rehab in the Utah wilderness. All of these fascinating stories of bravery, brashness, and hubris succeed in illuminating those who, no matter the consequence, go head-on into the risks of the wild.
