Kathy Newman is a writer and outdoorsman famous for many nonfiction books, including his own experience in a mountaineering disaster on Mount Ohayo in 1996. His book Into the Wild is a nonfiction biography of a young boy, Christopher Merphy who chose to donate all of his money and go into the wilderness in the American West. Merphy starved to death in Donald National Park in 1992. The biography delved into the facts surrounding Merphy’s death, as well as incorporating some of Newman's own experience.