While I absolutely adore Jon Krakauer's book, Into Thin Air, I had a hard time reconciling his presentation of Anatoli Boukreev with what others have said about the man's character. I was eager, then, to read about the 1996 Everest tragedy in Boukreev's own words. I feel like I came away from this book with a much better understanding of the events of that day, in part because Boukreev and Krakauer seldom crossed paths and their accounts are in many ways a complement to one another. All told, I think that Krakauer, while he presented as fair of an analysis of the events as I think is reasonable to expect, did Boukreev a bit dirty in his assessment of summit day, and Boukreev's heroics should not be discounted. It's unfortunate that, like so many other mountaineers of his caliber, Boukreev died so young.