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| Into the Wild | 
 enlarge | Author: Jon Krakauer
Publisher: Pan Books
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £2.00
You Save: £5.99 (75%)
New (35) from £2.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  51 reviews
Sales Rank: 1034
Media: Paperback
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 033045367X
EAN: 9780330453677
ASIN: 033045367X
Publication Date: September 7, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Amazing story, Brilliant character July 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Chris McCandless had courage, imagination, passion, desire, humility, intelligence, intellect, creativity, spirit, buckets and buckets full of spirit, standards, principles, morals, strength, stamina, ability to cope in adversity, individuality, conviction and many, many other attributes that could go on forever. He also had weaknesses and he sometimes made judgements that were wrong. He was incredibly human in that respect. His story is one of the greatest stories I have read and it has inspired me and filled me with enthusiasm for the wonder of life. Whatever his mistakes were that lead to his death well I for one could never criticise him for any of them. He accepted his mistakes like a man and got on with them, even the mistake that lead ultimately to his death. He didn't blame anyone else and he never complained. He died following his adventurous spirit and he willingly took himself on a journey that had masses and masses of risk. He knew that and went on regardless of the risk, not in a wanton disrespectful way as some of his critics may have you believe, but in a testing himself and a desire to achieve self-reliance and discover himself. That takes courage of the sort very, very few people on this planet possess.
The book is a brilliant read and the stroy of Chris McCandless' life is told and analysed with a great deal of perspective through careful investigative journalism and the descrptions of other similar characters and fates over the last couple of hundred years. It isn't all romanticism, it is placed in the context of reality. But even in that context, Chris McCandless spirit rises powerfully above it all.
I expect his parents and sister are bursting with pride at what their son has achieved but filled with pain at his continued loss. I would so wish to tell them how sorry I am he died and how much of a great impression their son has made on me.
There is beauty everywhere July 8, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book was very absorbing, and even though I have finished reading it about a week ago, I find myself still thinking about Chris McCandless and his struggle. The book accesses quotes from Chris's personal book collection that he was inspired by, which gives great insight to the things he was working on/towards. For some reason people take this story so personally (I say get over yourselves) and are quick to judge this poor man and his 'great Alaskan adventure', however I think the important part of this book is not the lack of preparation but his self discovery. He has an epiphany and realises happiness is truly experienced when it is shared, which is a big deal for someone who didn't have a closeness with anyone except for his sister. It's unfortunate that he had to die with such struggle, however, I think he found beauty within that and was able to accept his situation with grace. I couldn't imagine what it would be like for Chris's mother, to think your child died alone in such a tragic way must be absolutely heart wrenching. I think this was a great story, very well written, and there are so many levels in which people can find meaning relevant to them. If anything, perhaps we should all take something from Chris McCandless's values, and stretch outside our security blankets to learn more about ourselves and the world we live in. Not necessarily in Alaska.
 Starving to death was a small price to pay for such freedom July 5, 2008
What might motivate someone to cut all ties with their family, to give away all of their money to charity, dispose of their belongings and adopt a life on the road? In this day and age our possessions and vocations end up owning us, so it comes as somewhat of a shock to the system to see that a young and intelligent man would decide to dispose of the normal trappings of life. McCandless is infamous for having starved to death in the Alaskan wilderness, though the book looks at what brought him there.
In fact McCandless had spent a year or more on the road, moving from place to place throughout western and northern USA, holding down some basic jobs for a short time before moving on, seeming to all as though he were just one more drifter passing through. Though the book delicately looks at the young mans travels and examines the thoughts of McCandless as they are relayed through photographs and the accounts of the people he encountered along the way.
We find it so strange to think that somebody could turn their back on the trapping of society and seek to do nothing more than to travel around without the normal worries we all carry. Whilst I started the book knowing this young man starved to death, I could not help but feel that McCandless was doing something that many people do not have the courage for. A wonderful if somewhat sad read.
Gripping, suble,and well told story July 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I came to this book via Sean Penn's film, and am pleased to say it is much better. Where the film is sentimental, the book is realistic; where the film offers simplistic psychology, the book paints a rounded and suble picture, and provides a historical context. In fact, this is brilliantly told story of a young man obsessed by the wilds and a desire to simplify his life. Needless to say it all goes wrong, but Krakauer sympathetic portrait never descends into easy moralising.
there are more things in this world... June 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
After reading this book, I think we aren't dealing with an exploration nor an adventure story, at less speaking in the sense that commonly we give to these themes.
I have known a very little people as Christopher McCandless. Perhaps they are 1 between 1 million people on Earth, but they exists.
Although it's difficult to classify this persons, because his very deep essence is precisely they are unique and unclassifiable. McCandless was obsessed by the works of Jack London, but although he said he wanted to explore the far North of Alaska, he wasn't an explorer. People who knew him said he wasn't equipped and ignored all about surviving in these icy wild forests. Also, he seems to give a deep strange impression with nothing to do with wealth, richness, extraordinary force or so on. But he had "something". Here, we must not to be ingenuous, as after the happening of a tragedy, common, people has the trend to say these things they really didn't feel before by far.
All we can say is he seems to have been a mystic person not belonging to this world. He died young and perhaps he was in search of his place, out of Earth.
McCandless worked well when he needed money in his wandering life, but there are some points once more difference him from more common people, and was some manias about not observe an adequate hygiene and dressing. This perhaps indicates he had a touch of schizoid personality (24 years is an age for that).
But perhaps not, as another times he was sociable and polite. I don't think he was a hippy in the usual sense.
Christopher McCandless was an incognita, but he was a good person. Perhaps Jesus, Buddha, or San Francisco de Asis were people as him, perhaps not. These people also perhaps redeems mankind and if not, reveals we know very little about human brain and his deep mechanisms and motivations.
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