Item #900935 Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster (Signed). Jon Krakauer.
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster (Signed)

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster (Signed)

New York: Villard, 1997.
Advance Uncorrected Proof. Paperback.

Advance Uncorrected Proofs ( Proof ). First Edition. Inscribed “For Kate” and signed by the author on half-title.

When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin his long, dangerous descent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly toward the top. No one had noticed that the sky had begun to fill with clouds. Six hours later and 3,000 feet lower, in 70-knot winds and blinding snow, Krakauer collapsed in his tent, freezing, hallucinating from exhaustion and hypoxia, but safe. The following morning, he learned that six of his fellow climbers hadn't made it back to their camp and were desperately struggling for their lives. When the storm finally passed, five of them would be dead, and the sixth so horribly frostbitten that his right hand would have to be amputated.

Into Thin Air is an account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of Into the Wild. Jon Krakauer was on assignment for Outside Magazine and tasked to report on the growing commercialization of the mountain. Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to the Himalayas as a client of New Zealander Rob Hall, the most respected high-altitude guide in the world. Hall had summited Everest four times between 1990 and 1995 and had led thirty-nine climbers to the top. Ascending the mountain in close proximity to Hall's team was a guided expedition led by American guide Scott Fischer, who had climbed the peak without supplemental oxygen in 1994. Neither Hall nor Fischer survived the rogue storm that struck in May 1996.

Krakauer examines what it is about Everest that has compelled so many people -- including himself -- to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer's eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement.

Item #900935
ISBN: 0679457526

Quarto, 8-1/2 x 11”, buff wrappers printed in black, publisher’s black binding tape to spine, cciv, 294pp, Dramatis Personae, selected bibliography.

Previously read, some soiling and curling to wrappers and edges of leaves, very good.

Price: $200.00

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