Such is the way of the world: INTO THE WILD's alternate ending

This week Jon Krakauer revisits the life of Chris McCandless (spoilers) for the New Yorker online. A former bookbinder at IUP, Ronald Hamilton, read INTO THE WILD, Krakauer's 1996 book (and subsequent surprisingly good Sean Penn-directed film) and recognized some of the facts of his case from a similar incident during World War II in the Ukraine. Also, the chilling: "Chris McCandless would now be forty-five years old."

Kindle sale books of the month

I recommend: Jon Krakauer's EIGER DREAMS and Mary Norton's THE BORROWERS, British children's classic (don't look at me like that!) and the basis for the forthcoming Hayao Miyazaki film "The Secret World of Arrietty."
I'm buying: Nick Reding's METHLAND and Angela Lambert's 1939: THE LAST SEASON OF PEACE, because nothing goes together like Middle American drug crime and pre-WWII Britain.

Greg Mortenson, the James Frey of 2011?

"60 Minutes" is alleging that Greg Mortenson, author of THREE CUPS OF TEA, made up the central event of the book in which he (spoiler) is rescued from a K2 climbing attempt by an Afghan village where he will later come back to build a school. (I haven't actually read the book yet so if that summary is incorrect, feel free to reword.) He also claimed he was kidnapped by the Taliban which is being questioned. The L.A. Times has none other than Jon Krakauer, identified as a "former donor" to Mortenson's charity, calling the book "a lie."

There are also (arguably more serious) complaints that Mortenson's nonprofit, the Central Asia Institute, is is mismanaged and spending more money to promote itself domestically than actually building schools abroad as is its mission, although it currently gets 4 stars on Charity Navigator. Also charged, that Mortenson draws from the nonprofit to pay for book-related expenses, but isn't putting his proceeds from speaking engagements or book royalties back into it. (This is all from the "60 Minutes" transcript which I now cannot stop reading.) Oh, and of the 30 schools (out of 141) CBS visited that Mortenson was claiming to give money to, half were empty or not receiving any support.

This could be even worse than the Frey thing in my eyes because of the damage done to both the beneficiaries of the charity (who may or may not have gotten what they promised) and to the image of nonprofits as a whole (giving any prospective donors doubts). So disheartening.

Publishing Apocalypse

Dan Brown's THE LOST SYMBOL comes out today. OMFG. No one will ever buy or read another book again!! Let's panic!!!

In lieu of reading the actual spoilers, I'm sticking to my prediction from four months ago. I didn't use the Slate Dan Brown generator to come up with that, but it's fun to play with anyway.

I hope everyone associated with Brown's publisher, agent, assistant and movie franchise is taking the day off to drink Hypnotiq in a bubble bath.

But to plug a book that I will actually read -- Jon Krakauer's long-awaited WHERE MEN WIN GLORY: THE ODYSSEY OF PAT TILLMAN hits shelves today. Such is my confidence in the author, I pre-ordered this book; haven't read a word, but you should all go out and buy it anyway.

Good news: The Jon Krakauer book about Pat Tillman that was withdrawn last summer under the title THE HERO will arrive in stores this fall, knock on wood, with the new title WHERE MEN WIN GLORY. It's his first since 2003's UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN.

Because she didn't keep sweet

After I finished all the books I brought to Rome with me, I picked up Elissa Wall's STOLEN INNOCENCE: MY STORY OF GROWING UP IN A POLYGAMOUS SECT, BECOMING A TEENAGE BRIDE, AND BREAKING FREE OF WARREN JEFFS. I polished it off pretty quickly -- I'm fascinated by these Mormon splinter groups (UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN being my first exposure) and it's not hard to see why this survivor's memoir became a best-seller.

I recently reviewed a book about growing up in a cult in 1970s Queens and one of my main criticisms of it was that I never fully understood the pull of its guru leader over the community he created. Naturally, it can be hard to convey to someone outside those religious bounds the appeal of such a tight-knit organization, especially if the author (as this one had) grew up there and essentially didn't know any different for most of her life. Wall grew up FLDS, but spends a lot of time unpacking how FLDS leader Warren Jeffs controlled his flock without even the threat of bodily harm -- turning family members against each other, positioning himself and the faith as the only door to salvation and colluding with local law enforcement to create a culture of paranoia. The self-proclaimed prophet, who survived an internal power struggle after the death of his father Rulon, is currently serving 10 years in prison thanks in part to Wall's testimony that he forced her to get into an abusive marriage to her first cousin at age 14.

Wall repeatedly uses the phrase "keeping sweet" as an expression of the culture of silence and endurance fostered by FLDS church elders, particularly among the women of the church. "Keeping sweet" means responding to adverse circumstances with a smile, remaining compliant and good-natured even when things don't turn out as you planned. It's an incredibly loaded phrase for Wall because, from the time she was younger and saw the church forcibly dismantle her family multiple times (sending away her father, and later another one of his wives), she was forced to learn how to "keep sweet" to get along at church and her church school. In the years between when she first thought about leaving the FLDS and made her break with the church, she effectively had to unlearn these techniques of submission to propel herself out into the wider world. Wall grew up within driving distance of Las Vegas, but in a society as distant to me as Khomeini's Iran or medieval Britain.

No Krak For Any Price

My book club recently met to discuss Jon Krakauer's book UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN, a work of nonfiction that impressed me both when I read it the first time and when I skimmed it to prepare for our meeting. I actually just wrote a preview piece for the fall in which I expressed a deep interest in Krakauer's next book, THE HERO, about Pat Tillman's death in Iraq and the fallout over it.

Well, I'm still interested, but it looks like I'll have to wait for now because Krakauer has "withdrawn the title" less than four months from its publication date. The Publishers Weekly account (disclaimer: I write for them) suggests he is so unhappy with the book that he's willing to tick off his publisher, Doubleday, by forcing them to cancel all their plans for it. This is the first time I've heard of such a "withdrawal," perhaps because publishers would rather we don't find out about the things they can't for whatever reason sell. But no way would they have been able to sneak it under the rug given Krakauer's many fans (like me).

Of course, since the book is about the war in Iraq there will be some speculation over whether political motives are forcing Krakauer's hand, but I can't find anything to suggest that its status has anything to do with his charged subject. From what I've read, Tillman's family cooperated with Krakauer, but the Army Rangers (the division in which Tillman served) did not.

In any case, I'm with The Egalitarian Bookworm:

I fully expect Jon Krakauer to do justice to this fascinating guy who died far too young, and also to do a different kind of justice to the insidious forces that kept the truth from Americans.