When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. A
In April 1992 a twenty-four-year-old from the Washington, D.C., suburbs named Chris McCandless walked into the Alaska wilderness below Mt. McKinley with a small-caliber rifle and a ten-pound bag of r
