<b>Spanning an extraordinary range of subjects and locations, these ten gripping essays show why Jon Krakauer is considered a standard-bearer of modern journalism. </b><br><br>His pieces take us from a horrifying avalanche on Mount Everest to a volcano poised to obliterate a big chunk of Seattle; from a wilderness teen-therapy program run by apparent sadists to an otherworldly cave in New Mexico, studied by NASA to better understand Mars; from the notebook of one Fred Beckey, who catalogued the greatest unclimbed mountaineering routes on the planet, to the last days of legendary surfer Mark Foo. <br><br>Bringing together work originally published in such magazines as <i>The New Yorker</i>, <i>Outside</i>, and <i>Smithsonian</i>—all rigorously researched, vividly written, and marked by an unerring instinct for storytelling and scoop—<i>Classic Krakauer</i> powerfully demonstrates the author’s ambivalent love affair with unruly landscapes and his relentless search for t