He is the author of bestselling nonfiction books—Into the Wild; Into Thin Air; Under the Banner of Heaven; and Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman—as well as numerous magazine articles.

His father was "relentlessly competitive and ambitious in the extreme" and placed high expectations on Krakauer, wishing for his son to attend Harvard Medical School and become a doctor.

[4] After graduating from college in 1977, Krakauer spent three weeks alone in the wilderness of the Stikine Icecap region of Alaska and climbed a new route on the Devils Thumb, an experience he described in Eiger Dreams and in Into the Wild.

Krakauer reached the peak and returned to camp, but four of his teammates (including group leader Rob Hall) died while making their descent in the storm.

By the end of the 1996 climbing season, fifteen people had died on the mountain, making it the deadliest single year in Everest history to that point.

In addition to his work on mountain climbing, the topics he covered as a freelance writer varied greatly; his writing has also appeared in Architectural Digest, National Geographic Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Smithsonian.

Krakauer felt the short account did not accurately cover the event, and clarified his initial statements—especially those regarding the death of Andy Harris—in Into Thin Air, which also includes extensive interviews with fellow survivors.

It concerns a variety of topics, from ascending the Eiger Nordwand in the Swiss Alps, Denali in Alaska or K2 in the Karakoram, to the well-known rock climbers Krakauer has met on his trips, such as John Gill.

The book employs a non-linear narrative that documents the travels of Christopher McCandless, a young man from a well-to-do East Coast family who, in 1990, after graduating from Emory University, donated all of the money ($24,000) in his bank account to the humanitarian charity Oxfam, renamed himself "Alexander Supertramp", and began a journey in the American West.

Krakauer has contributed royalties from this book to the Everest '96 Memorial Fund at the Boulder Community Foundation, which he founded as a tribute to his deceased climbing partners.

Director Baltasar Kormákur responded, claiming Krakauer's first-person account was not used as source material for the film, and alleged that his version of events conflicted with the plot.

Robert Millet, Professor of Religious Understanding at Brigham Young University, an LDS institution, reviewed the book and described it as confusing, poorly organized, misleading, erroneous, prejudicial and insulting.

[18] Mike Otterson, Director of Media Relations for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), told the Associated Press, "This book is not history, and Krakauer is no historian.

[20] In the October 25, 2007, season premiere of Iconoclasts on the Sundance Channel, Krakauer mentioned being deeply embroiled in the writing of a new book, but did not reveal the title, subject, or expected date of completion.

Doubleday Publishing originally planned to release the book in the fall of 2008, but postponed the launch in June of that year, announcing that Krakauer was "unhappy with the manuscript.

The book draws on the journals and letters of Tillman, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers who served alongside him, and research Krakauer performed in Afghanistan.

"[22] In his review in the Los Angeles Times, Dan Neil wrote that the book is "a beautiful bit of reporting" and "the definitive version of events surrounding Tillman's death.".

[23] Three Cups of Deceit is a 2011 e-book that made claims of mismanagement and accounting fraud by Greg Mortenson, a humanitarian who built schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan; and his charity, the Central Asia Institute (CAI).

[27][28] The 2016 documentary 3000 Cups of Tea by Jennifer Jordan and Jeff Rhoads claims that the accusations against Mortenson put forward by 60 Minutes and Jon Krakauer are largely untrue.

[31] "Instead of delving deeply into questions of fairness as universities try to fulfill a recent government mandate to conduct their own investigations and hearings—apart from the police and the courts—Krakauer settles for bromides," Bazelon wrote.

"University procedures should 'swiftly identify student offenders and prevent them from reoffending, while simultaneously safeguarding the rights of the accused,' he writes, asserting that this 'will be difficult, but it's not rocket science.'"