Jon Krakauer's bestseller, Into the Wild, revolves around the true story of a young man named Chris McCandless and his two-year, transcontinental adventure ending in Alaska. The discovery of his decomposing body in April 1992 eventually made national headlines and prompted Krakauer to write an article of McCandless' journey in Outside, a naturalistic magazine. For months after its publication, responses flooded into the magazine mailroom. Some readers admired McCandless "for his courage and noble ideals." Others considered him an "idiot, a wacko, a narcissist who perished out of arrogance and stupidity," "undeserving of the considerable media attention he received." It was this quarrel that encouraged Krakauer to develop his article into a full-blown novel. Krakauer does not claim to be an impartial biographer; in a "new journalistic" effort, he makes his personal convictions apparent. In two chapters of Into the Wild, both titled "The Stikine Ice Cap," the author...