Reviews - Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster

5.51k reviews for:

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

Everest books are always very interesting and unbelieveable to me, and this one is no exception.

It's amazing that anyone survives the cold, fatigue and hypoxia associated with Everest. This book stands as a warning that although people have climbed the mountain, it is by no means conquered

viva_la_natedog's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous reflective sad medium-paced

oz2021's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous informative reflective sad medium-paced

contsai's review against another edition

3.0

3.5 rounding down to 3 / i've been trying to read more nonfiction and nily bought me this book for christmas :) i did not "dislike" reading this and thought it was well written and enjoyable even though every minute of it made me think "this could not be me."

i feel like krakauer sometimes wants his cake and to eat it too, in that he wants to present his story as a listing of facts (as best as he can remember them under the stressors of climbing everest), but when he occasionally makes conjectures, that he doesn't want to be necessarily judged/disagreed with for those conjectures? imo telling a story from your own perspective will always involve conjecture, that's the point of your perspective. people will disagree with you on whether or not your interpretation of events is "correct," even if those people weren't there. i don't think that's anything that a writer has to defend themselves against. you just gotta live with it. (i do think krakauer is in the right re: his postscript defense against the dewalt book though. i don't think we could ever really know what boukreev was thinking because i don't think you can know what anyone was thinking at that time due to the fact that high altitudes scramble your brain. another reason why i will not be climbing everest)