An Average Man's Book Review - Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer

My grandfather, a tailor who lived in Brooklyn, was a Jack London fan and loved to read adventure books sitting by his old reading lamp in his apartment in Flatbush. Being rather a couch potato myself, I nevertheless love reading adventure genre books. I believe that my Jack London, is the author Jon Krakauer. I've read all his books and eagerly await any new ones he's written. Into Thin Air, which is Krakauer's account of a disastrous ascent up Mt. Everest was my first Krakauer read followed by Eiger Dreams, an  accounting of people who are driven to do what most of us wouldn't dare doing. Krakauer makes us wonder whether these people are crazy or are they experiencing life at it's very fullest. After all, we're only here once. Might as well go for it. I found Under The Banner Of Heaven a fascinating story of violence, lust and everything that is wrong with religion gone amok. Into The Wild is the book I recently finished. It's the story about a young man, Chris McCandless, a recent Honors graduate of Emory University, who withdraws his $25,000 life savings, donates it to charity and leaves his comfortable middle class existence for a life on the road. This book is more of a study of a young man who rejects it all and decides to just vanish "Into The Wild". It's a harrowing tale but I was totally absorbed by it. The rights to this book were recently purchased by Sean Penn who was as smitten with it as I was, and has recently made it into a movie. Let me know what you think. -Miles