Author Jon Krakauer’s own life is every bit as varied and exciting as those he writes about. He is the author of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven and his latest book, Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman. Jon Krakauer was born in 1954, and in addition to being a writer, he is also a mountaineer and well-known for outdoor and mountain-climbing writing. It was his father who introduced him to mountaineering when he was eight-years-old. Into the Wild was published in 1996 and shortly thereafter spent two years on The New York Times bestseller list. The book tells the true story of Christopher McClandess, a young man from a well-to-do east coast family who, after graduating from college, began a journey in the American west. Nearly two years later, McCandless was found dead in the Alaskan wilderness. Krakauer additionally recounts the story of Everett Ruer, a young artist and wanderer who disappeared in the Utah desert in 1934 at age 20. Into The Wild was adapted into a film, starring Sean Penn.
In May 1996 Krakauer reached the top of Mt. Everest, but during the descent a storm engulfed the peak, taking the lives of four of the five teammates who climbed to the summit with him. The unsparingly honest book he subsequently wrote in 2007 about Everest, Into Thin Air, became a #1 New York Times bestseller. It was also honored as the “Book of the Year” by Time magazine, citing “Krakauer combines the tenacity and courage of the finest tradition of investigative journalism with the stylish subtlety and profound insight of the born writer.”
In 2003, Under the Banner of Heaven became Krakauer’s third non-fiction bestseller. This book examines the extremes of religious belief, particularly fundamentalist offshoots of Mormanism and specifically looks at the practice of polygamy. As a child growing up in Oregon, many of Krakauer’s playmates, teachers, and athletic coaches were Latter-day Saints. Although he talks about how he envied the certainty of their faith, he was often baffled by it and sought to understand the power of such belief.
Like the men whose epic stories Jon Krakauer has told in his previous bestsellers, his latest book, Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, chronicles the life and death of Pat Tillman who was an irrepressible individualist. In 2002, Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in the United States Army. He was deeply troubled by 9/11 and felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He talked his brother Kevin into joining with him. Two years later, Pat died on a desolate hillside in southeastern Afghanistan. It was obvious to most of the soldiers on the scene that a ranger in Tillman’s own platoon had fired the fatal shots, but the Army aggressively maneuvered to keep this information from Tillman’s family members and the American public for five weeks following his death.
Krakauer draws on Tillman’s journals and letters, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers who served alongside him and extensive research on the ground in Afghanistan. Where Men Win Glory exposes shattering truths about war. All his family wanted was the truth and it seems incredibly sad that they had to work so hard to get it. I found this to be a very sad book but an important one. As one of the investigators in this case said, “One of the things that make the Afghanistan and Iraq wars so different from previous wars is the glaring disparity of sacrifice. For the overwhelming number of Americans, this war has brought no sacrifice and no inconvenience, but for a small number of Americans, the war has demanded incredible and constant sacrifice.”
-Norma
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