Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Genre: Nonfiction
Length: 332 pages
Audiobook Length: 9 hours and 8 minutes
First Published: 1997

Publisher’s Description

A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that “suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down.” He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more–including Krakauer’s–in guilt-ridden disarray, would also provide the impetus for Into Thin Air, Krakauer’s epic account of the May 1996 disaster.

Quotes from Into Thin Air

Once Everest was determined to be the highest summit on earth, it was only a matter of time before people decided that Everest needed to be climbed.

Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.

This forms the nub of a dilemna that every Everest climber eventually comes up against: in order to succeed you must be exceedingly driven, but if you’re too driven you’re likely to die.

“With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill,” Hall observed. “The trick is to get back down alive.”

But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind.