In this book Jon Krakauer tells us about his eyewitness account of the 1996 disaster on Mt. Everest. The 1996 disaster was the deadliest event in the mountains history, And Krakauer tells about all the events that caused the disaster in great detail. He tells about his troubles along with the troubles of the rest of his group.

I found the detail of this book extremely interesting because it really helps you understand how terrible and tough it is to try and conquer Mt. Everest. The way Krakauer describes the conditions of Everest makes me wonder if it is even worth the risk to climb it. And people in the book agree because some people turned back halfway up the mountain even after paying an extremely large amount of money for a guide. For some climbers however the opportunity is just to great to pass up which is understandable considering it is the tallest mountain in the world.

Krakauer describes the month long process of acclimazation which is slowly going higher and higher on the mountain to help prevent altitude related problems with the body. Then he talks about the actual summit attempt which tells about all the problems he and his team faced on the mountain. I was extremely interested in all the problems the climbers face because a lot of the problems could have been avoided if they were a little bit more careful. However some of the problems were just bad luck. Like the bad weather the team encountered shortly after they had reached the summit.

You can tell that Krakauer is not proud of his actions on the mountain. Instead it is the opposite because he feels like he could have saved his friend Andy Harris who died on the expedition.

In this book you can really get attached to characters and start to like them just as if you would in real life so when one of them dies you really do feel bad. With that said this book really does get into your head and start to play with your emotions a bit.

I think that I liked this book so much because of the great suspense that it had. This book is a great read that will keep you interested at all times. I would recommend this book to anyone and I will definitely be looking for more work from this author.