What is Jon Krakauer's Net Worth?
Jon Krakauer is an American writer and mountaineer who has a net worth of $10 million. Jon Krakauer is best known for authoring such non-fiction bestsellers as "Into the Wild," "Under the Banner of Heaven," and "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman." He also wrote "Into Thin Air," which chronicles his experience as part of the ill-fated 1996 expedition to summit Mount Everest. Additionally, Krakauer has penned articles for numerous periodicals, including Outside, National Geographic, and Smithsonian.
Early Life and Education
Jon Krakauer was born on April 12, 1954 in Brookline, Massachusetts as the third of five children of Lewis and Carol. He was raised in Corvallis, Oregon, and was introduced to mountaineering at the age of eight by his father. Krakauer attended Corvallis High School, graduating in 1972. He subsequently attended Hampshire College in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1976 with a degree in environmental studies.
Mountaineering Career
Following his graduation from college, Krakauer spent three weeks alone in the wilderness of Alaska; there, in the Stikine Icecap region, he climbed a new route on the Devils Thumb. Later, in 1992, Krakauer went to the Andes in Patagonia to take on Cerro Torre, a sheer granite peak regarded as one of the most challenging technical climbs anywhere in the world.
In 1996, Krakauer embarked on what would become his most infamous mountaineering experience, summiting Mount Everest. He was a member of the ill-fated group that got caught in a violent blizzard high on their climb; although Krakauer reached the peak and successfully returned to camp, four of his teammates were killed in the storm. By the close of the 1996 climbing season, a record 15 people had died scaling Everest.
Journalism Career
Krakauer launched his journalism career in 1983 when he became a full-time writer for the outdoors-oriented magazine Outside. For the magazine, he wrote about his mountaineering experiences, including the 1996 Mount Everest disaster; he covered a variety of other topics, as well. Krakauer has since written for several other periodicals, including National Geographic, Architectural Digest, Smithsonian, and Rolling Stone.
Books in the 90s
Krakauer released his first book, "Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains," in 1990. A non-fiction collection of essays and articles Krakauer wrote about mountaineering, it covers such climbs as the Eiger, Denali, and K2. His next book was 1996's "Into the Wild," a chronicle of the peregrinations of Christopher McCandless, a young man who left behind his well-to-do lifestyle to traverse the American West, where he ended up dying of starvation. A New York Times bestseller for two years, "Into the Wild" was later adapted into a 2007 film directed by Sean Penn and starring Emile Hirsch as McCandless.
Krakauer's third book, "Into Thin Air," was published in 1997. An expansion of the article he wrote for Outside about the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, the book became another New York Times bestseller, and was also named by Time magazine as the "Book of the Year." Shortly after its release, the book was adapted into an ABC television film entitled "Into Thin Air: Death on Everest," starring Christopher McDonald as Krakauer. The book was adapted again in 2015, this time into the theatrical film "Everest," with Krakauer portrayed by Michael Kelly. The film was a considerable commercial success, although Krakauer decried it for being inaccurate.
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Further Books
In 2003, Krakauer published his fourth book, "Under the Banner of Heaven," an examination of fundamentalist Mormonism that largely focuses on the Lafferty brothers, who murdered two of their family members in the name of their faith. The book became Krakauer's third New York Time bestseller, and inspired a 2006 documentary entitled "Damned to Heaven." Later, in 2022, it was adapted into a Hulu limited series starring Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones. Krakauer's fifth book was "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman," which was published in 2009. It draws from the journals and letters of the titular late NFL player, who was killed by friendly fire while serving as a US Army Ranger in Afghanistan, a reality the Army concealed.
Krakauer released his first e-book in 2011: "Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way." In the controversial book, he makes claims of accounting fraud by Greg Mortenson and his charity the Central Asia Institute. A number of investigations were consequently launched into Mortenson's alleged financial mismanagement. Krakauer published his next book, "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town," in 2015. Using several case studies of women who had been raped in Missoula, Montana, the book examines how sexual assault is handled by colleges and the American criminal justice system at large.
Personal Life
In 1977, Krakauer met former climber Linda Moore; the two eventually married in 1980. After initially living in Seattle, Washington, they settled in Boulder, Colorado in the late 90s.
Real Estate
In 1997 Jon paid $355,000 for a relatively-modest home in Boulder, Colorado. This remains his primary home.
