A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that suggested "a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more --- including Krakauer's --- in guilt-ridden disarray, provided the impetus for this epic account of the May 1996 disaster.