Jon Krakauer
Krakauer climbs, and the writing came out of the climbing rather than the other way round. He built a reputation on mountain and outdoor journalism for magazines, then wrote the nonfiction books he is known for: Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Where Men Win Glory, a life of Pat Tillman.
In 1996 he went to Everest on assignment and was on the mountain during one of the deadliest disasters in the history of climbing it. Into Thin Air came out of that, and it is a strange book to have written: a first-person account by a participant who is also the reporter, published fast, disputed by other survivors, and honest about how little he could see or do at the time.
The later work moved off the mountains and into institutions, religion, the military, the machinery that manufactures an official story. What holds it together is that he never flatters himself in it.
Movies (1)
TV (1)
Books (2)
Where to start with Jon Krakauer
There is no reason to start anywhere but Into Thin Air. It is short, it moves, and it is the rare disaster account written by someone who was inside the disaster and knows he is an unreliable witness to it.
The natural next step is Into the Wild or Under the Banner of Heaven, neither of which is among the credits listed here. What is here is Meru, a climbing documentary in which he appears as himself and does the job of explaining, to people who do not climb, why anybody would; he is a better talking head than most writers. Iconoclasts is a conversation series and strictly for completists.