Into the Wild / Let Me Go

Finished two of the books in my queue, and would recommend both. Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, is the true story of a 24 year-old from an East Coast family with a father who was a NASA scientist. After graduating college, Chris McCandless adopted the name "Alexander Supertramp" and decided to devote the next chunk of his life to wandering the United States with a minimum of material attachments. McCandless is drawn by the idea of testing his limits against nature. After a close call with a flash flood and starvation, he is drawn to the Alaskan Wilderness, where he decides to rough it on Stampede Trail, in the shadow of Denali National Park. Remarkably, McCandless lived for 113 days in the Alaskan bush, eventually dying of starvation, in part due to flooding caused by glacier melts. I found the story mesmerizing, despite the fact that the outcome was never in doubt. While a number of people have criticized McCandless' choices and Krakauer for glorifying what these critics view as a follish death, I find it a thoughtful cautionary tale for the weekend warrior types (and even more experienced survivalists), in the same vein as Krakauer's book Into Thin Air.

Let Me Go by Helga Schnieder, is the true story of an Austrian journalist coming to terms with her estranged mother, who left her family to work for the Nazi SS at Auschwitz/Birkenau during WWII. The book is harrowing, given the fact that no reconciliation is reached between mother and daughter -- the mother is unrepentant and truly believes she was performing a public service of sorts for the Third Reich by exterminating Jews. Particularly disturbing is the fact that her mother understands what she did, yet can't (or refuses) to acknowledge the criminality of her actions. It's a dark moment in the vein of the book "Hitler's Willing Executioners," which theorizes that many Germans were engaged in actions that furthered the Holocuast because they believed in it, rather than simply being "forced into it" by circumstances or fear.

Currently reading -- 1491 -- offering substantial evidence that what we taught about Indian population, history, culture, etc. in school -- is a bunch a bunk...