In his harrowing first-person account first published in 1997, Jon Krakauer recalls the 1996 Mount Everest disaster that claimed the lives of eight climbers, and very nearly his own.

Have you ever been forced to confront your own mortality?

Have your snap decisions ever directly determined whether people live or die?

As an avid yet amateur climber and adventure journalist already known for his book Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer was invited along on expert mountaineer Rob Hall's Mount Everest expedition.

But what should have been a glowing review instead became a chilling account of a storm that engulfed the summit as climbers were still en route.

In Into Thin Air, Krakauer provides his firsthand account of the expedition, detailing the factors that contributed to the disaster and the lessons he learned from it.