It was fine. The writing was very good. I don't think I would have had any interest if the author had not been Krakauer.

This was a great anthology of some of Jon Krakauer's reporting, containing a sample of his work from Outside Magazine, The New Yorker and Smithsonian. If you liked "Into The Wild" or "Into Thin Air," you'll enjoy reading this collection. Some of the more memorable pieces in "Classic Krakauer" include "Mark Foo's Last Ride," which looks back on the life and death of a surfer who predicted how he'd die; and "Loving Them To Death," which investigates wilderness therapy programs that were marketed to cure bad behavior after a boy's death.

The title says it all. Classic Krakauer is can't miss writing. Readers looking for strong nonfiction writing will definitely be pleased with this selection.

While this book wasn't quite what I expected, the stories were entertaining and Jon Krakauer showed not only his talent, but his versatility with this book. Good read.

I have been a Jon Krakauer fan for many years and have read many of his books. This collection of essays continues his tradition of combining solid reporting with insightful and excellent writing. Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended.
My thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for my honest review.

Some of these articles - particularly Loving Them to Death - are going to stick with me for a long time. Fluid writing often about uncomfortable subjects and situations. Nature is rough.

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!).

Classic Krakauer in bite size pieces. If you have read anything before by the author, this is of similar quality. There are 9 articles comprising the book and all are good. It allows you to get a quick outdoor fix without having to devote the time needed to complete an entire book. I enjoyed reading one story a day and looked forward to the next. After reading these, I wish he went back to writing more feature length articles. I especially enjoyed the article about Mt Rainier as his descriptions brought me back to my climb a few years ago.

I really loved this. I've been following Krakauer for many years and I really relish his books, but these essays are shorter while still keeping the stirring nature of his writing intact- his essay about Mark Foo's untimely death at Mavericks and the devastating reporting of Aaron Bacon's loss during a 'wilderness therapy' program have stuck with me for weeks after reading them. The book is a quick read- more's the pity- but there's no denying just how good Krakauer is at getting to the heart of a story.

Volcanoes, and oceans, and caves… oh, my! This is the Krakauer that I have come to know and love in bite-sized chunks. Each story is interesting in its own right and captures your attention from the first sentence. I’m not usually a fan of books with multiple stories, but, there not being a new full length Krakauer book (hint, hint) for me to read, this one hit the spot. I would recommend it to anyone who loves good writing, adventure, and a distinct point of view.

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.
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AMZ and B&N after publication

I've yet to read a piece by Jon Krakauer that I don't enjoy quite a bit, and this collection of articles is no exception. Combining his investigative reporting skills, first-person immersive accounts and wealth of outdoor adventure knowledge, these stories - spanning the late 1980s through today - explore an interesting array of topics, from trekking through the remove Gates of the Arctic National Park to searching for life on Mars. My only real criticism is there were only about a dozen articles in this collection - I could've read 100 more.

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.

Collection of pieces written for outdoor magazines before Into Thin Air, with the usual Krakauer theme of the dangerous and destructive things people get up to in nature--the death of an iconic surfer, the potential eruption of Mt. Rainier, the exploitation of sherpas by Everest climbers and abusive wilderness therapy for rebellious teens.