Who is John Krakauer?

John Krakauer was born in 1954 in Oregon.  His father interested him in mountain climbing at a very young age. After John graduated from Hampshire College in 1976, he spent most of his time in mountainous parts of the United States working as a carpenter and a fishermen.  John climbed to the top of numerous mountains, including Mt. Everest in 1996.  Mountain climbing is a risky business, and on his excursion to reach the top of Mt. Everest, a storm killed four of his five teammates.  John wrote about this tragedy in Outside Magazine and won a National Magazine Award.  He eventually wrote a book called Into Thin Air about Everest, and it became a #1 New York Times bestseller, honored "Book of the Year" by TIME Magazine, one of the "Best Books of the Year" by the New York Times Book Review, a finalist for a 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award, and one of three finalists for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in General Non-Fiction.  John Krakauer's articles and writings have been published in Outside, GEO, Architectural Digest, Rolling Stone, TIME, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and National Geographic. An article he wrote for Smithsonian about vulcanology received the 1997 Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism from the American Geophysical Union.  John Krakauer's prestigious novel, Into the Wild, spent more than two weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.  Preceding Into the Wild, Krakauer published Eiger Dreams and Iceland: Land of the Sagas.  In 1998, Krakauer created the Everest '96 Memorial Fund at the Boulder Community Foundation, to tribute his lost friends on Everest.   Krakauer also serves on the boards of the American Himalayan Foundation and the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation.  In 1999, Krakauer received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is John Krakauer's latest book published in 2003.  In this book, Krakauer explains his childhood being surrounded by Mormons and tries to figure out the Mormon lifestyle and passion.
Info from: http://www.randomhouse.com/features/krakauer/author.html
Image from: http://blog.oregonlive.com/books/2008/06/medium_krakauer.jpg