Classic Krakauer: After the Fall, Mark Foos Last Ride and Other Essays from the Vault by Jon Krakauer

Classic Krakauer: After the Fall, Mark Foos Last Ride and Other Essays from the Vault Reviews

• 
  Janette Mcmahon

  The articles were interesting and I enjoy Krakauer's writing. What would have made the collection more relevant would have been to provide an update to what he had reported on.
• 
  Jenn "JR"

  Another enjoyable read from NetGalley -- a collection of Jon Krakauer articles from the 1990s from a variety of publications. The topics vary widely - mostly outdoors, mostly men and seem to focus on the risk of death from the power of nature. "Mark Foo's Last Ride" is about the death of a legendary and accomplished surfer at Mavericks; followed by a tale of the risks of living near active volcanos from debris flows (forget about lava eruptions; the inequality and risk on Mt Everest; stories of deaths of participants in the hands of outdoor guides -- both climbing and at-risk-youth programs. The only two stories that don't talk about actual deaths are the story of a search for rock-eating bacteria during a warm, sticky underground caving campout; a profile of a cantankerous 70 year old Alpinist, and an Arctic backpacking trip.
  
  The stories all feature Krakauer's distinctive, descriptive prose style -- though I find the word Brobdingnagian a bit over-used -- it was a thoroughly enjoyable collection of articles. One change I might make would be to provide more context at the beginning of each chapter since they often refer to time points in the past without reference to the publication date (so "nine years ago" is really 34 years ago!).
• 
  Heino Colyn

  This is my first time reading Krakauer and WOW - what a writer. The articles in this collection were written between the mid 80s and 2014, and the consistency of the quality of his writing is amazing. I found every single one of the articles to be incredibly engaging - from the last days of a legendary big wave surfer to problematic wilderness therapy programs for troubled youths. There was also a fair share of nature just killing people, sometimes with some... guidance (?) from other people. Fascinating book. Loved it.
• 
  Lori L (She Treads Softly)

  Classic Krakauer by Jon Krakauer is a very highly recommended collection of nine pieces written for various publications, including The New Yorker, Outside, and Smithsonian. As Krakauer notes "Most of the short pieces I wrote during the years between Eiger Dreams and Into Thin Air vanished into the crevices of time and have been forgotten. But Anchor Books has retrieved seven articles from this period, plus two more recent essays, and rescued them from oblivion with this new collection.." Personally, I recall reading several of these articles originally in the Smithsonian; they are what lead me to seek out anything written by Krakauer.
  
  The articles include:
  
  Mark Foo’s Last Ride: Mark Foo was a big-wave surfer who "made no bones about his thirst for fame or his strategy for achieving it: ride the world’s biggest waves with singular audacity and do it when the cameras were rolling." His last ride was the Mavericks in northern California, a surfing location at the end of Pillar Point Harbor, where some of the world's largest waves can occur.
  
  Living Under the Volcano: Mt. Rainier poses a serious threat to thousands of people who live in the shadow of the mountain. Geologists warn that the volcano will erupt again, but there is no way of knowing when that will happen. A serious threat is the fact that lahars (flash floods of semiliquid mud, rock, and ice) can happen spontaneously, and would roar down the mountain with destructive speed and power.
  
  Death and Anger on Everest: Russell Brice of a company called Himalayan Experience, or Himex, shocked climbers when on May 7, 2012, he made an announcement that, for safety reasons, he was pulling all his guides, members, and sherpas off the mountain. When a couple years later the ice bulge Brice was concerned about did break lose, starting an avalanche that killed sixteen, all whom were Nepalis working for teams. This has instigated sherpas demands for better compensation and other benefits based on the risks they take.
  
  Descent to Mars: Located in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, just a few miles from Carlsbad Caverns, Lechuguilla Cave is a forbidding vertical shaft that you have to rappel down and then negotiate a labyrinthine of passages as you go even lower. NASA scientists are along on the expedition studying the microbes they hope to find there based on the fact that life on other planets might be microbial and would have have to derive its energy entirely from mineral sources, or eat rocks, and this kind of life could exist on earth in Lechuguilla Cave.
  
  After the Fall: Two years after the unexpected, bizarre mountain climbing accident that killed a man, a law firm brought suit against the climbing instructor, the school, and the company that manufactured the climbing equipment (that the deceased used incorrectly) on behalf of the victim’s widow.
  
  Gates of the Arctic: In 1980, eight and a half million acres of the Brooks Range in Alaska was set aside as the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. This park is a vast, untouched wilderness that contains no roads, trails, or campsites.
  
  Loving Them to Death: After a young man died during wilderness therapy program, it was clear that his death was not an accident. His journal showed systematic abuse and neglect by the staff. This begs the question about oversight for these programs and the people who run them.
  
  Fred Beckey Is Still on the Loose: "For longer than I’ve been climbing, for longer than I’ve been alive, the most talked-about piece of writing in the sprawling literature of mountaineering has been a mysterious tome known as the Little Black Book." This book, written by Fred Becky, is rumored to be a list of the planet’s finest unclimbed mountaineering routes.
  
  Embrace the Misery: "Lately you've found yourself wondering if the end of civilization might be at hand... [Y]our current angst should be dismissed as unwarranted paranoia. Most people in your privileged Western milieu have spent their entire lives inside a bubble of peace and prosperity, but to believe 'la dolce vita' will continue forever is delusional. Sooner or later, the party always ends. Every great civilization since antiquity has gone into decline, and you can’t really pin the blame on entropy. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the second law of thermodynamics, but in ourselves."
  
  Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Knopf Doubleday.
  
  http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2018/0...
• 
  Brendan Monroe

  Jon Krakauer is one of my favorite writers of non-fiction. He's right up there for me with other names you've likely heard of such as
  Erik Larson and
  John Berendt. I don't think there's anyone who writes about wilderness and the outdoors as well as Krakauer does, and even if you've never read him you're likely familiar with
  Into the Wild and
  Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster because both have been turned into films (though "Everest" — a film largely inspired by "Into Thin Air" — lacks that book's intrigue and tension).
  
  So when I saw that Anchor Books had assembled a collection of Krakauer's essays into a collection, I eagerly picked it up.
  
  It doesn't matter what the subject is, every essay in this collection draws you in. I've never surfed, but Krakauer's account of the last days of surfer Mark Foo was captivating, as were the multiple essays in here dealing with rock climbing, despite my not being a climber, or architecture, despite ... well, you get it.
  
  Of all the essays here, though, the one that really stuck with me was "Loving Them to Death." Originally published in 1995 in Outside Magazine, LTTD really got my blood boiling. Here Krakauer tackles the subject of "wilderness camps" for troubled youth, which was a sick fetish among mainly evangelicals back in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s (I think that the popularity of this sort of misguided interventionary method has largely faded in popularity since, or at least I hope it has).
  
  While there are plenty of genuine villains featured in this essay — I'm thinking particularly of Lance Jaggar, the sadistic leader of a wilderness camp called "North Star" — much like that Michael Jackson documentary that came out last year, you can't help but want to smack the parents of these kids. Yes, I get that your kid is troubled and may have serious issues re drugs or whatever, but if you need to enlist a couple of burly fellows like Jaggar to "extract" (i.e. kidnap) your kid out of bed one morning and drag him to the middle of a wilderness where he'll spend the next 63 days being forced on a death march through the desert, maybe it's time to reevaluate whether you should be a parent.
  
  What I would have liked more about this collection is if it had included a bit more follow-up, considering that the majority of these pieces were first published 25-35 years ago. As it was, I had to get googling to see what became of Jaggar and all the other child abusers who were brought to court following the death of a kid enrolled in their program (
  sentenced to community service ... seriously??).
  
  I love the line that Krakauer takes with a parent of one of the kids enlisted in Anasazi, a program similar to North Star's, during a five-hour trip en route to a camp where the parents will be reunited with their "reformed" kids.
  
  "I am vividly reminded that troubled kids are sometimes the product of seriously haywire families. After listening to one father — a self-important doctor from Kansas — pontificate smugly for much of that long ride, I wonder whether the child of this pathetic man would have been better served had Dad been shipped off to Anasazi instead of Junior."
  
  Let's hope that Krakauer keeps dishing these out for many more years!
• 
  Bookphenomena (Micky)

  4.5 stars.
  
  Please amuse me for a moment as I thrust a non-fiction read under your nose. I have been and still am to some extent, an avid reader of climbing, mountaineering and expedition non-fiction. With a love of the mountains myself and some amateur climbing in my back pocket, I do love to read about the big, adrenaline-edge climbs. Jon Kraukauer has journaled and recorded his way through some amazing experiences, and his INTO THIN AIR is one of my favourite books.
  
  This collection of his articles and essays on wilderness and risk were a great read and my favourites were those that featured mountain peaks and extreme conditions. However, these essays feature extreme surfing, predicting eruptions and lahars with a doomsday feel, the ethics and liability of high alititude climbing, caving and much more. Those I favoured include: Living Under the Volcano, After the Fall, Loving them to Death
  
  Krakauer narrates this stories with balance and seeming accuracy but there is also a thread of challenge and investigation through many of these stories which I really appreciated. He had a way of drawing you into these stories, bringing a human lens to extreme achievements, disasters and tragedy. His narrative was always engaging. Some stories made me feel a rightful anger such as Loving Them to Death, told with factual narrative of bullying and gaslighting a young person to their demise, elicting such emotion in this reader.
  
  If you’ve never read Jon Krakauer, this is a good starting place to dip your toe into. There are such a range of topics to these essays that some and probably most will appeal to you, as they did to me. If you’re a fan already, you’ll love this.
  
  Many thanks to Knopf Doubleday for this early review copy.
  
  This review can be found on A Take From Two Cities
  here.
• 
  Alisa

  You can just tell that these pieces were written by a talented writer. Personally I have no interest in surfing or volcanoes or mountain climbing but when I was reading Krakauer's articles on these subjects I found myself fascinated. My favorite articles were definitely After the Fall and Loving Them to Death. After the fall had some interesting commentary on,frankly,people's stupidity and willingness to blame anyone (sue them in court) but themselves. Loving them to death was hard to read at times. It talks about wilderness camps that promise to reform troubled youth and all the horror that goes on in those places. A brutal article, I had to take breaks while reading it because I was fuming with anger.
  I only wish there was additional information included about the fate of some of these stories. Most of the pieces were written in the 80-90s,a lot of time has passed since then. I would love to know what happened with the case against some people from the Loving them to death,if they received any punishment for their actions.
  Thank you to netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
• 
  Erin

  ARC for review - to be published March 2018.
• 
  Simon Arneberg

  This is a good book to read if you're ever on a 45-hour Amtrak to Washington, about to start a really big adventure. It's strange how many connections there were between the content of this book and the things we experienced / people we talked to on our bike trip.
  
  Favorite quote: "The fact that admission to this Eden requires a toll paid in sweat, pain, and fear makes its beauty all the more intoxicating." (p. 100)
• 
  Karen

  A collection of essays on many topics from magazine writing over the years, so not as compelling as his longer works. But still, always, entertaining to read. Krakauer likes his edges and margins, his extreme environments and his bro-dudes. And he’s also a very accomplished man of Uncomfortable Pursuits. He climbs, he spelunks, he talks to Christopher Alexander. A fair read.
• 
  Anna

  This work shows the range of Krakauer’s writing. He knows how to tell a story. I’ve only read his books so was surprised to find this gem filed with some of his articles from the 80s and 90s. If you enjoy his books and his storytelling, you will enjoy this read.
• 
  Jeimy

  Krakauer excels at writing about the great outdoors and the people who embrace its challenges. Every time I pick up one of his books I know I will get lost for hours at a time getting to know the people featured in his texts. He not only makes his real-life characters come to life in the page, but also describes them in such a way that the reader is emotionally invested in their plights.
• 
  Shannon

  I have previously read several books by the author, Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air and Into the Wild being my favorites. Although I have quite a few of his books still on my bookshelves that need to be read. This book, Classic Krakauer, is a collection of articles written by the author that span a wide variety of people and places, from Mount Everest to a cave in New Mexico. One of the many things I enjoy about the author's writing is that he can and does write about such a wide variety of topics. I believe most of the essays or articles in this book were originally published in newspapers or magazines. Like some other reviews I have read, the one thing I would change would be to provide a slight background or better dates with each of the essays. Most of these were written in the 1990's so when the author refers to the past in the articles, it is actually much longer than when the article was actually written. I have always enjoyed Krakauer's writing style and look forward to reading the rest of his published works in the future.
  
  Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for sending me an ARC of this book.
• 
  Jerry Smith

  There are a few modern day authors whose work I will pick up regardless of the subject because I greatly value their prose and string style. Krakauer is one of those (Erik Larson and Bill Bryson are too) and it is fortunate for me that I also find the subjects JK tackles tend to align with my interests also.
  
  This book is actually a collection of his essays/articles written for publications in the 80s and 90s primarily. As such, they cover ground that is rapidly receding into the mists of time with the death of Mark Foo for example, probably only really being remembered amongst surfing aficionados these days. However, as always, JK is a joy to read. I have thoroughly enjoyed all his thought provoking, sympathetic and razor sharp writing in his longer works, and the skill he employs to achieve such great prose is certainly on display here
  
  I have to be honest and state that I am conflicted by collections such as this. I love the fact that one can move from one account to the next and cover a lot of ground, but I am often frustrated that each essay necessarily lacks the depth of coverage, and nuanced examination possible in a longer work. This is not a criticism of the author or the book, but sometimes I wish there was more ground covered. Another positive is, however, that one can always research and bring oneself up to date as I have done after reading a number of these essays.
  
  I learned a lot here. There were things I knew nothing about, and now feel I do. As with all great writers, JK really opens up worlds for us with a rare skill. I very much enjoyed this book and it is short at less than 200 pages, and also written in a way that makes it a page turner too so it won't take you long to read. Most of the stories touch on well versed subject areas for Krakauer namely; the great outdoors, extreme sports and most obviously, mountaineering. It is a great read and I recommend you consume this work by Krakauer - he is a master writer and journalist in my opinion.
• 
  Brent Woo

  Been on a survival stories kick lately, don't know how I haven't picked up any Krakauer before. All stories are never actually just about "the survival" or anything trite like 'man vs nature'. (Nor are they intended to be poetic/lit like Jack London.) The one set on Everest is about fair working practices for the sherpas. The one about caving is, ironically, debating about funding space travel. The one set in Alaska is about an unexpected clash between honoring both indigenous rights and conservation. I find that a very compelling way to elevate stories beyond dry journalism, and also to keep interest without having to ramp up the melodrama.
  
  Favorites were "Gates of the Arctic", "Fred Beckey Is Still on the Loose", "Descent to Mars", "Death and Anger on Everest", "Living Under the Volcano". Most of them! Although, with "Fred Beckey", at times I worried he would fall into the trap of
  The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit — that guy held the weird old hermit on such a pedestal, it was hard to take him seriously ("But why did he reject society and go live in the woods? What does he know that we don't?" — Nothing, he's just a misanthrope.) Sure it's interesting to hear about these dirty bearded old men who live in vans (or the woods) and have rejected society and all that, but we don't need to worship them, or hang on to their every word like they're some oracle on the mountain. Fortunately Krakauer never really falls into that hobo-worship problem.
  
  No idea what "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" was doing in this collection. It was about an architecture theorist? "Embrace the Misery" also started off strong, sort of a zen recollection, how to deal with the world going to pot, but it fizzled out and didn't go anywhere. Don't care about surfing, so "Mark Foo" was whatever.
  
  Overall great stuff, already looking forward to his book-length works.
• 
  Peter Knox

  I really enjoyed this short collection of Krakauer’s earlier feature article writing, since I certainly missed it all the first time around.
  
  He’s a very talented and passionate writer, as he is a researcher, and his early skill at investigative reporting is on display here as he covers a diverse range of outdoors related stories, accidents, profiles, and more.
  
  For anyone that’s a fan, including me, you won’t find as much personal perspective in these pieces (read Eiger Dreams for that) but you’ll read the writing that shaped his books later. For others, this is a great introduction to his style and interests.
• 
  Brandur

  Good stuff — a number of collected essays on a wide array of subjects including Mavericks (the wave), Mount Rainier, lawsuits and the demise of Chouinard Equipment (Patagonia's sister company), and cave spelunking. Krakauer does a nice job of opening his pieces with an interesting personal story (whether one of his own or told from another's person's point of view) to get you hooked, and then zooming out to a broader view of the topic at hand and getting into detail. Keep in mind that the collection is phoning it in a little bit — there's not much of a common theme here, but rather a bunch of loose work smashed together.
• 
  Michael

  I wasn't blown away by Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, which contains as many slow, padded stretches as it does chilling ones. On the other hand, each of the stories in this collection, released last year as an ebook and coming this October in paperback, are lean as can be, whether Krakauer is mourning surfing great Mark Foo, profiling the legendary mountaineer Fred Beckey, or recounting in grim detail the last days of teenager Aaron Bacon, who died as a result of torturous wilderness therapy. In the introduction, Krakauer writes that, following the successes of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, he was relieved to leave magazine work behind and focus solely on book-length projects. After finishing this book, I was ready for Classic Krakauer Vol. 2.
  
  Thank you to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for this review and forthcoming blog coverage.
• 
  Jane

  Krakauer is a great author, and I will read anything he writes.
  
  These essays are definitely worth a read but they do feel a bit dated. I don't believe I've read any of them before, so it's nice to have them gathered into a collection.
  
  I wish every essay had an update. I had to Google Aaron Bacon, a teen who died at a wilderness school due to abuse and neglect as detailed in the essay Loving Them to Death, to find out what happened at the trial.
  
  I am anxiously awaiting Krakauer's next book though.
• 
  JaumeMuntane

  
  Adoro a Krakauer. Adoro especialmente sus escritos en el marco de la naturaleza y montañismo que constituyen reflexiones interesantes sobre la condición humana. Aún recuerdo el impacto de la lectura de "Mal de altura" hace diez años, en agosto de 2010, mientras recorría andando toda la Vall d'Aran. Así como la lectura de los artículos publicados en "Sueños del Eiger". Por todo esto, y por la calidad de la prosa de Krakauer, he disfrutado con todos y cada uno de los relatos contenidos en esta bella edición de "Krakauer esencial"...y me ha despertado el gusanillo de volver a leer los artículos de "Sueños del Eiger".
• 
  Cori

  This delightful mishmash of diverse longform essays Krakauer has written throughout his career reinforces what a great journalist he is. His curiosity and wide ranging interests provides you with stories on topics you might not seek out on your own. His skillful research, attention to detail, and descriptive writing pulls you into his world and immerses you into the experience he is sharing.
  
• 
  Mark Arbanasin

  Was my first time reading anything from Krakauer and I have to say that this collection of short stories really belw me away. Each one was fascinating both in the focus of the story being covered but also in the way in which Krakauer uses his language, research, love of nature and his deep wealth of first person experience in climbing (particularly) to add a ton of color to each topic he covered. And each article is generally between 10-30 pages which makes them great for a quick read if you're crunched for time or worried about starting a major work. Highly recommend this one.
• 
  Eliza Doll

  This compilation of Krakauer articles from 1990-1996 (with two, more recent essays) were all written between the publications of Eiger Dreams, a compilation of Krakauer's short article from early on, and Into Thin Air, a Krakauer classic and his most famous book, which also happens to be the one that got me hooked to his writing. I have read both of those and recently read Into the Wild, so when I had a few few hours the night before the NYC half marathon and didn't have a book to read while putting my feet up on a wall, I obviously asked my fave NYC bookstore (shoutout McNally Jackson!) front desk worker if they had any Krakauer.
  
  To me, the most intriguing of the eight articles is the one titled Loving Them to Death about "wilderness therapy" programs gone wrong. Starting this article, I immediately thought of a conversation that I have had many times with my siblings, which always ends with the conclusion that anything can be solved with physical activity. The three of us always say that a program, centered around physical activity, we believe, could be a huge step forward in improving mental health struggles. I guess our idea was not centered around behavioral struggles per se, as these wilderness therapy camps, mentioned in the book, are. But, that being said, it seems like the (not so novel) idea already exists and in fact has a long history of abuse within the programs. Sadly. The story about Aaron Bacon is horrific. I appreciate how frank (is that the way to put it?) Krakauer is in his writing. He tells the facts; he doesn't sugar coat it; he makes you cringe. It makes reading his work feel like you lived during the time that the story happened. He's brilliant.
• 
  Floyd Williams

  I thoroughly enjoyed this book. it is a collection of previously published Krakauer articles covering mountain climbing, surfing, caving, exploring the wilderness, etc. There are many harrowing moments but there is also thoughtful commentary about nature and our environment.
• 
  Randee

  There are a handful of writers who make anything and everything interesting. Jon Krakauer is one of them. Each of these pieces held my interest. I learned and was entertained. That’s exactly what good writing does.
• 
  Steve Bera

  A collection of short stories, some old and some new but none that I recall reading before. All very polished. Good short read. I have now read all of his books, and this one ranks in there with the others. Have not read 3 cups of deceit, oops.
• 
  M.J. Groves

  Always enjoy Krakauer. This is a collection of old essays which are nonetheless new to me and interesting. From surfing to caving to vocanoes to, of course, mountain climbing, a great bedside book for short reads when you know you don’t have a lot of time.
• 
  Emma Anderson

  I think I’ve found my niche for non fiction! Every essay was so interesting and so thrilling! Made me feel like I could fight off a bear or something (and even if I wasn’t successful I know Krakauer would write a great article about it)