About the Author

Jon Krakauer is the author of Into the Wild he also wrote other books that included Eiger Dreams, Into Thin Air, and many more. He was born in 1954 in Corvallis, Oregon. He was taught about mountaineering by his father, and after graduating from Hampshire College in 1976 he got a job as a carpenter and commercial salmon fisherman. He divided his time between Colorado, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest, while working. During his fee time he would go mountain climbing. In 1977 he went alone to Alaska to climb an ice cap, and sound a new route to climb a peak called Devils Thumb. In 1992 he climbed the West Face of Cerro Torre in the Patagonian Andes. Next in May 1996 Jon Krakauer climbed Mount Everest with five other people, they all reached the top. When a storm hit them coming back down four of them lost their lives. Jon Krakauer wrote an article about his experience on Everest for a magazine, and won an award for it. He followed this by writing a book about Everest called "Into Thin Air", it is a #1 New York Times best seller, and has been translated into 21 different languages.  From there he continued to write many more books, his most recent is "Under the Banner of heaven: A Story of Violent Faith", published by Doubleday in July 2003.

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