Into the Wild is a 1996 non-fiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It is an expansion of a 9,000-word article by Krakauer on Christopher McCandless titled "Death of an Innocent", which appeared in the January 1993 issue of Outside.

Christopher Johnson McCandless was an American hiker and itinerant traveler, who also went by the name "Alexander Supertramp". After graduating from college in 1990, he traveled across the North American continent and eventually hitchhiked to Alaska in April 1992.

After hiking along the snow-covered Stampede Trail (an old mining road) with minimal supplies, McCandless came upon an abandoned bus west of Healy alongside an overgrown section of the trail near Denali National Park and lived there a few months utill his tragic death.