* The story of Chris McCandless resonated particularly with me, because it nearly got me fired. A quarter century ago, despite having zero journalism experience or training, I managed to talk my way into a magazine internship by somewhat overstating my Macintosh computer skills. The Friday of my first week on the job, word came down that a last-minute cover story was being crashed in, and that I was to talk to the writer of the emergency replacement—Jon Krakauer—and retrieve his manuscript file over the modem. (This was 1992.) A task that should’ve taken minutes instead devoured half of the day as I tried to hide my ignorance of how to get two computers to talk to each other and surreptitiously speed-dialed a friend who subscribed to MacUser. Even the editor in chief, whom I knew only from his photograph, eventually poked his head over the wall of my cubicle to inquire about the delay. McCandless’s tragic story was so compelling that everyone quickly forgot about my incompetence.