Another highly readable and enjoyable book by Jon Krakauer. This work is a collection of stories on climbing - high altitude, high risk climbing - and related adventures. With his great abilities to tell a story, Krakauer brings these real-life stories so vividly to you. It is also in many ways a search into his own soul for Krakauer. He writes about the high-risk venture that mountain climbing is and speculates whether people like Reinhold Messner have raised the bar too high by going to Everest all alone and without oxygen. Krakeuer says that Messner is one in a century kind of climber and not everyone can match his feats. But, everyone has set Messner's accomplishments as the climbing goal and consequently set themselves up for very high risk.
There are other wonderful pieces about Krakauer's own risky ventures on the Eiger glacier and in Alaska. You also learn some of the slangs and climbers' lingo. For example, 'catch a bit of air' and 'let's log some flight time' simply refer to a climber freely falling down the mountain!
I enjoyed the book very much. It is a collection of independent stories and so can be read in short bursts and in any order. I would recommend it to get a feel for mountaineering and its nuances.