Into Thin Air
Jon Krakauer
Krakauer's firsthand account of the deadly 1996 Everest season brings the same probing questions about ambition and risk as Into the Wild, with even more urgency because he was there.
12 books to read next
Books Like Into the Wild
If you loved Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Readers come to Into the Wild for Krakauer's mix of investigative reporting and personal reflection as he reconstructs Chris McCandless's path from privileged graduate to wanderer in the Alaskan bush. They love its questions about why some people reject comfort for risk and solitude, its portraits of the people McCandless met on the road, and Krakauer's willingness to draw on his own reckless youth. It is part biography, part meditation on wilderness, idealism and the pull of the open road.
More Krakauer-style reporting
The stranger in the woods
Michael Finkel
The true story of a man who lived alone in the Maine woods for 27 years. Like Krakauer, Finkel tries to understand why someone would walk away from society entirely.
The Perfect Storm
Sebastian Junger, Anne Collins
A meticulously reconstructed account of men lost to nature's power. Readers who admired how Krakauer pieced together McCandless's final months will appreciate Junger's similar investigative method.
Solo journeys into wilderness
Wild
Cheryl Strayed
Strayed's memoir of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail alone after personal loss shares Into the Wild's belief that the wilderness can strip a life down and remake it.
A Walk in the Woods
Bill Bryson
A funnier take on attempting the Appalachian Trail, but it still captures the romance and hard reality of leaving ordinary life behind for the trail.
Tracks
Robyn Davidson
Davidson's trek across the Australian desert with camels is a fierce, independent journey that echoes McCandless's hunger for solitude and self-reliance, told from the traveller's own perspective.
Books that inspired McCandless
Walden
Henry David Thoreau
McCandless revered Thoreau, and reading this classic on simple living in the woods helps explain the ideals that drove him toward Alaska.
On The Road
Jack Kerouac
The classic novel of restless young Americans crossing the country, capturing the same romance of the open road that colours McCandless's hitchhiking years.
The Call of the Wild
Jack London
London's Yukon stories were among McCandless's favourites. This short novel shows the harsh, seductive North that shaped his imagination of Alaska.
Living on the margins
Nomadland
Jessica Bruder, Harper Audio
Bruder follows older Americans living in vans and chasing seasonal work, offering a contemporary look at the drifters and road culture that McCandless encountered.
Desert solitaire
Edward Abbey
Abbey's season as a ranger in Utah's canyon country is a passionate, opinionated meditation on wild places that fans of Krakauer's reflective passages will relish.
Educated
Tara Westover
A memoir of growing up isolated in rural Idaho and breaking away from family, exploring the tensions between independence, family ties and the wider world that run through McCandless's story.
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