Jon Krakauer

• Born: April 12, 1954
• Place of Birth: Brookline, Massachusetts

Biography

When Jon Krakauer was two, his father, Lewis Krakauer (a physician) moved his wife (an art teacher), and son from Brookline, Massachusetts, to Corvallis, Oregon, which was much closer to nature than Brookline. Krakauer grew up in Corvallis. By age eight, he had begun mountain climbing with his father. Their first assault was on the South Sister Mountain, whose summit lay at about ten thousand feet.

Among Lewis Krakauer’s friends was Willi Unsoeld, a man who was on the first American team to scale Mount Everest in 1963. The young Krakauer hung onto every word of Unsoeld’s tales about this climb. Unsoeld and his fellow mountain climber, Tom Hornbein, became Krakauer’s heroes. Krakauer went east to attend Hampshire College in Massachusetts, where he met David Roberts. Roberts wrote about mountain climbing and was a noted mountain photographer. Through Roberts, Krakauer learned about the exciting mountain climbing in Alaska, and he eventually hitchhiked to Alaska to climb to the Brooks Range’s Arrigetch Peaks.

Hooked on climbing, Krakauer took up carpentry in Boulder, Colorado, which enabled him to earn a living, however meager, by working for five months and climbing for seven. While in Boulder, he met and married Linda Moore, also a mountain climber, who tried to convince Krakauer to abandon the sport because of its inherent dangers. Krakauer started writing when the American Alpine Club invited him to submit an account of his mountain climbing to its journal. This article, his first, was followed three years later by one in Mountain, a British magazine, on his climbing the Devil’s Thumb. The money he received for this article convinced him to quit carpentry and become a writer, and he began publishing in magazines like Smithsonian, Outside, and Architectural Digest.

Many of Krakauer’s books began as magazine articles. Outside asked him to write an article about Christopher McCandless, who at twenty-four sold all his possessions and struck out into the Alaskan wilderness with nothing save for his shotgun, a bag of rice, and some books. He ultimately starved to death and was found beside a note in which he begged to be saved. Krakauer, who understood McCandless’s motivation, turned the story into a well-received book called Into the Wild. He followed this with a prize-winning book that the American Library Association singled out as the best book for young adults in 1998. This book, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, is the story of Krakauer’s own ascent of Mount Everest with a party of twenty-nine. Twenty-eight members of the party were caught in severe weather that made their descent so perilous that eight died, making it one of the worst Mount Everest disasters. Krakauer’s later writing included a departure from his mountain climbing books. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (2003) is an examination and critique of Mormons who live in remote settlements in the western United States and still practice polygamy.

In 2009, Krakauer returned to the biography genre with Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, his account of the life and death of Pat Tillman, a football player who left the National Football League to join the US Army and was killed in Afghanistan. His 2011 book Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way presents his doubts about the public image of well-known humanitarian Greg Mortenson and his charity, the Central Asia Institute. Based largely on interviews conducted with former employees and others close to Mortenson, the book raises questions about claims that Mortenson had made about his life and charity work. Changing gears once more, Krakauer focused on the difficult topic of rape in his 2015 book Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, investigating the issue of rapes on college campuses and how they are often mishandled by both universities and the justice system through specifically studying such cases in the town of Missoula, Montana.

This was followed by the 2019 book Classic Krakauer: Essays on Wilderness and Risk. The collection of ten previously published essays, mostly written in the 1990s, focused on the outdoorsy topics that prompted Krakauer to take up writing in the first place. In 2022, his book Under the Banner of Heaven was made into a mini-series for FX with Dustin Lance Black.

Krakauer also works with the American Himalayan Foundation as a way of giving back to those who helped during his ill-fated trip to Everest and has served as its board president.

Bibliography

Boyd, Ella. "Famed Outdoor Writer Shares Take On Backcountry Riding." Powder, 6 Feb. 2024, www.powder.com/trending-news/jon-krakauer-backcountry-riding. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Considine, Austin. "How ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ Took On Murder and the Mormon Church." New York Times, 27 Apr. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/04/27/arts/television/under-the-banner-of-heaven-jon-krakauer-dustin-lance-black.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Egan, Timothy. "At Home With: Jon Krakauer; Back From Everest, Haunted. The New York Times, 23 May 1996, www.nytimes.com/1996/05/23/garden/at-home-with-jon-krakauer-back-from-everest-haunted.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Forker, Jennifer. "Review: ‘Classic Krakauer’ is Pure Adventure and risk." Associated Press, 28 Oct. 2019, apnews.com/classic-krakauer-arts-and-entertainment-49e686e8bdaa421793ef38f691f94af7. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Jacobs, Peter. "Why the Iconic Adventure Writer Jon Krakauer Is Telling the Story of Rape in a College Town." Business Insider, 21 Apr. 2015, www.businessinsider.com/why-jon-krakauer-is-writing-missoula-rape-and-the-justice-system-in-a-college-town-2015-4. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Kaufman, Amy. "'It's Total Bull': Jon Krakauer Hates Everest, Praises Sean Penn and Just Made a Doc on Polygamy." Los Angeles Times, 25 Sept. 2015, www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-jon-krakauer-everest-into-thin-air-20150925-story.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Krakauer, Jon. "Death and Anger on Everest." The New Yorker, 21 Apr. 2014, www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/death-and-anger-on-everest. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Krakauer, Jon. "'Rolling Stone Has a Lot to Answer For': Jon Krakauer on Campus Rape, Victim Backlash and why Missoula Was the Hardest Book He’s Had to Write." Interview by Laura Miller. Salon, 22 Apr. 2015, www.salon.com/2015/04/22/rolling‗stone‗has‗a‗lot‗to‗answer‗for‗jon‗krakauer‗on‗campus‗rape‗victim‗backlash‗and‗why‗missoula‗was‗the‗hardest‗book‗hes‗had‗to‗write/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.