Into The Wild

NATIONAL BESTSELLER In April 1992 a young man from a welltodo family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt McKinley Four months later his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter This is the unforgettable story of how Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die It may be nonfiction but Into the Wild is a mystery of the highest order Entertainment WeeklyMcCandess had given 25000 in savings to charity abandoned his car and most of his possessions burned all the cash in his wallet and invented a new life for himself Not long after he was dead Into the Wild is the mesmerizing heartbreaking tale of an enigmatic young man who goes missing in the wild and whose story captured the world s attention Immediately after graduating from college in 1991 McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car stripped it of its license plates and burned all of his cash He would give himself a new name Alexander Supertramp and unencumbered by money and belongings he would be free to wallow in the raw unfiltered experiences that nature presented Craving a blank spot on the map McCandless simply threw the maps away Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister he vanished into the wild Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless s short life Admitting an interest that borders on obsession he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless When McCandless s innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté pretensions and hubris He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge Krakauer brings McCandless s uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows and the peril adversity and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understandingand not an ounce of sentimentality Into the Wild is a tour de force The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer s stoytelling blaze through every page