Alaska Books

I have enjoyed this cookbook in which many have shared their favorite recipes. So far everything I have tried, my family has liked. There's a bit of everything in this book and it is a fun one.

I bought this cookbook while visiting AK. I love to bake and there are some terrific and easy recipes in here. A cookbook I will use often.

This is a story of outdoor adventure and personal transition. These hunting tales are humorous, touching, and sometimes tragic, and through them runs the silent question: to kill or not to kill?

In a refreshingly original western voice, Stephen Reynolds tells his life story. As a game warden, he explores the wonders of wild, untamed places such as the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico, and the Brooks Range and Yukon Delta of Alaska. He meets people who use the land to live and people who live to abuse it. His is the heritage of a boy raised as a hunter, drawn to the excitement of the kill, but who experiences transform him into an outspoken protector of wildlife. Yet, this is no sermon or manifesto. Stephen Reynolds offers adventure, spiritual change, and transformation - but no easy answers. B&W illustrations.

If you've read "Row to Alaska By Wind & Oar" by Pete and Nancy Ashenfelter, you will enjoy this book more. It's the same place only in 1937 and rowed by a woman just out of college using a dugout canoe and oars. The book was only recently finished having been a lifetime project for the author. But it's full of really nice B&W photos of the journey and enough detail that if you were planning this trip it would give you an idea about where the dangerous water lies and the kind of things you might want to bring. A great armchair adventure.

In 1937 one Betty Carey embarked on the ultimate adventure, rowing from Puget sound Alaska by dugout canoe but her adventure didn't end there. Her explorations of the Inside Passage and adventures with loggers, lightkeepers, fishermen, missionaries and other residents recounted in Bijaboji: North To Alaska By Oar creates an astounding adventure story armchair readers won't want to miss.

This book is by far the best resource for birding in Alaska. It is a must have for any Birdwatcher going to Alaska. The location coverage is very thorough and all the hotspots like Nome, Barrow and the Kenai Peninsula are covered in great depth. If you are familiar with the ABA or Lane Birdingwatching Guide Series, this book lives up to the legacy and is as good or better than any book in the series (which says a lot.)

Buy this well in advance of your trip. There is a lot of information to process and the hours on the plane will not do it.

There is some species by species information, but this is mostly a bird finding guide. If you are a birder headed for Alaska, be sure to get this book, but also make sure you have a good Field Guide. Personally, I recommend the Sibley Western Guide.

First, a disclaimer: I helped write a couple of the chapters in this Guide. My contributions were modest, at best, but you should know.

Because I think this is not just the very best birder's guide to Alaska; it's one of the best birder's guides anywhere. Excellent maps, chapters by highly skilled, well-informed local birders (perhaps excluding this reviewer), and a thoroughness that is astonishing given Alaska's size and range of habitats.

Need an Emperor Goose? West tells you where and when (Kodiak, Fall and Winter, pp. 336-7). After a bunch of alcids? West compares Gull Rock in Kachemak Bay, Valdez Narrows and the Chiswell Islands. Only have a little time in Anchorage? West can send you to Potter Marsh (p. 34). From Ketchikan in the southeast to Adak out the Aleutian Chain; from Cordova and the incredible shorebird migration to Barrow at the northern tip of the state; the Guide pretty much covers all of Alaska.

Even better, West addresses the special challenges of getting to and finding a place to stay in the truly remote birding destinations, including St. Paul in the Pribilof and Gambell on the western tip of St. Lawrence Island.

If you are going to spend any time birding Alaska, this Guide is simply indispensable.

I do disagree with another review in one detail: if you only bring one bird identification guide, bring National Geographic 4th Edition. David Sibley is terrific for the regular North American species, but Nat Geo is better for those Asian vagrants you might just be lucky enough to see.

Highly recommended.

This gorgeous and unusual book should be required reading for both lovers of memoir and anyone who lives in "Indian Country" (which, really, is most of us.) Hayes layers narratives of self, land, history and tribe in an unusual way that feels utterly organic. She also offers real insight into both the brokenheartedness and the joy that characterize modern Native people's experience. Though it is not without minor flaws, I give this book 5 stars because it is amazing and unique.

Ernestine Hayes has captured what it means to grow up with one foot in white culture, the other in a native way of life she must struggle to keep alive and burning in her heart. I loved the way native stories wove in and out of her experiences. I hope she has another book in the works because I want to read more of what she has to say.

Bluewater Seven: South From Alaska, a novel by Don McLain, is an engaging story of working and living on the oil rigs off of the coast of western America during one greatly difficult winter. As the courageous crew move an offshore drilling rig from the northern coast through the Gulf of Alaska to the Californian coastal regions, readers are treated to an active and engaging tale, thrilling its readers with an dynamic story of barfights, a loathsome fisherman, and the dangers of the open ocean. Bluewater Seven is very highly recommended to those with an interest in general fiction who are searching for an enticing novel based on a true story and depicting the realities of the life of oil-rig men.

Bluewater Seven: South From Alaska, a novel by Don McLain, is an engaging story of working and living on the oil rigs off of the coast of western America during one greatly difficult winter. As the courageous crew move an offshore drilling rig from the northern coast through the Gulf of Alaska to the Californian coastal regions, readers are treated to an active and engaging tale, thrilling its readers with an dynamic story of barfights, a loathsome fisherman, and the dangers of the open ocean. Bluewater Seven is very highly recommended to those with an interest in general fiction who are searching for an enticing novel based on a true story and depicting the realities of the life of oil-rig men.

I bought this book a few years ago, while staying at the Falcon Inn Bed and Breakfast in Eagle, Alaska. I re-read it just this past weekend and probably enjoyed it even more the second time. It's like you're right there with the author, experiencing the excitement and hardship of frontier life as it happened. Certain to enjoy. Great for kids too, as the writing style is refreshingly authentic and straight forward.

This author signed copy has been in my library unread for around 8 years. I regret to say I dont remember Evelyn B. Shore because if I could talk to her now there is so much i would like to say.
The book starts out with her and her 4 sibling and their parents trapping in the remote areas of the Alaska during fall and winter seasons for a decade. She grows up knowing nothing but survival and hunting. The simple fun she desribes having with her siblings make me wish I were there. She was the greatest of women in her capabilities. Her driscription of the Northwwest fills my soul. The added photos are great in seeing what it must have been like.
This was a great book I would reccomend to anyone who considers themselves a survivor or who would enjoy the way life use to be.

This book is the rarest of combinations: a thoroughly-researched scholarly masterpiece cum edge-of-the-seat political non-fiction thriller. It describes how the tribes (Peoples) of the North American Arctic deployed a variety of tactics, posturing, negotiating, and bargaining their way into reclaiming the rights for their ancient lands from a reluctant and truculent State.

This permafrost parable tackles literally all the burning geostrategic and political issues of the day: terrorism, secession, sovereignty, neo-tribalism, supranational structures, the race to secure mineral resources and shipping lanes, property rights, genocide, you name it.

Whether the lessons of this long-drawn conflict are applicable elsewhere is another matter. The tribes had as their interlocutor the largely benign and law-abiding government of Canada. I am pretty sure that they would have elicited an entirely different response from Saddam Hussein, the Myanmar junta, or even the Israeli government. Sam Vaknin, author of "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited"

"Breaking the Ice: From Land Claims to Tribal Sovereignty in the Arctic" by Barry Zellen is a fascinating and densely researched history of the very top of our world, and its original inhabitants. It chronicles the long struggle by the Inuit of Alaska and the Western Canadian Arctic to regain control over their homeland after the European conquest of the Americas.

For anyone who has been to Alaska or northern Canada, or has flown over the polar region and wondered what human drama has unfolded in the icy and forbidding Arctic landscape below, this unique historical text is for you. As well, if you're fascinated by the often overlooked role played by Native Americans in the making of modern history, you will find Zellen's history an important contribution to our understanding of what some might think of as a forgotten history of the Americas.

Zellen's book is introduced by two well known northerners, former Mayor Dick Hill, the first mayor of the Arctic's first modern town, Inuvik, as well, Inuvialuit land claims negotiator Edwin Kolausok, who contributes some insights from the Aboriginal perspective that help to provide context for the reader, to better understand the history that Zellen recounts.

And what detail! Of the book's 450 page length, some 150 pages is a remarkably detailed footnote section with literally hundreds of works cited. It is obvious the author spent many years immersed in the historical literature as well as wading through heaps of policy documents, land claims treaties, and other historical documents. While this much footnoting might ordinarily suggest the book is intended only for scholars and experts in Arctic studies, in fact this book reads surprisingly lightly, so while the footnotes will aid future generations of scholars, they do not impede the reading experience of novices.

The author lived and worked up in the Northwest Territories of Canada for many years, and this brings to his history of the Arctic an authenticity that is often lacking in accounts written by explorers, and temporary visitors to the Arctic who are not there long enough to probe beneath the surface and to comprehend the intricacies of cause and effect.

But he does not seem to impose his world view on his telling of the history. In fact, as a journalist in the Arctic Zellen was known to be a critic of the land claims process, and the risks and temptations of corruption created by the large cash settlements paid to, and the limited managerial experiences of, the Natives of the North.

But Zellen's history, written some ten years after he lived up in the Arctic, forgives the early mistakes made during the land claims implementations in Alaska and Canada, and provides some historical context and understanding of those cases of corruption that were reported on by the press. Rather than to criticize, he helps us to understand, and explains how the land claims process has been a vital and important learning experience for the original peoples of North, providing a crash-course in capitalism, modernization and the fundamentals of management in a single generation and with no prior experience. This reflects a maturing of the author as he made the journey from journalist during the 1990s to historian today.

The new, modern skills required to negotiate and implement land claims treaties in the Arctic, never before taught to the original peoples of the North, were learned by Natives in real-time, on the job, sometimes through `trial-by-fire.' Some critics of the land claims process such as Judge Thomas Berger, one of the world's best known land claims critics who chaired the famous Berger Inquiry, suggest the land claims experiment was in fact designed to fail.

But the Natives of the North proved a quick study, learning how to manage billions of dollars in a remarkably short time. They made even a flawed model work through sheer determination and ingenuity. Before land claims were settled the Arctic was largely cut off from the world of modern capitalism, knowing only poverty with conditions resembling the worst of the third world in many villages. In a single generation, the Natives of the North had to go from a pre-capitalist society to modern capitalism; land claims was their one shot at modernization and they took it. And it was a wild ride, fraught with risks, but one they boldly embarked on.

As Zellen describes it, it was through this land claims experience that the Inuit re-learned how to govern themselves, in a modern way, with board meetings, shareholder votes, investment analysis, economic development activity, and the cultivation of a new style of modern manager for their newly created Native corporations. This experience proved a vital bridge between their proud ancient ways and the new, modern world. And it made it possible for the Inuit aspire for more: the return of self-government to their homeland -- of the Inuit, by the Inuit and for the Inuit.

It is a fascinating story, and being familiar with Zellen's earlier work covering the Arctic as a journalist, I was pleased to see that time has mellowed him, and that he now appreciates the way land claims helped to modernize the North and prepare its people for the future.

I recommend this book in the highest of terms. It tells a unique and fascinating history, full of drama, in a land so many of us think of as barren and empty.

As Zellen's 450 pages of detail attest to, the Arctic is not at all empty but instead is full of energy, full of politics, full of passion for change, for justice and for a balance between two worlds -- the old, traditional world and our new modern one.

It's a story many will enjoy learning about, and one that might inspire some insight in other parts of the world where similar issues continue to fester unresolved, from the Middle East where ancient hatreds have prevented a modern reconciliation, and even in the high Himalaya, where the modern economic giant China is currently facing off against the proud, traditional Tibetans. In so many places, modern and ancient collide in an orgy of destruction and violence.

But in the Arctic, the Inuit have found a different way to resolve their differences with the modern world, and to craft a bargain that preserves old while embracing new. It wasn't an easy journey, but it was a successful one that offers our world much hope.

Pat Brans
Grenoble, France

This is a wonderful compilation of photographs centered around flying in bush Alaska. Anyone who has lived or travelled off the beaten path in the far north knows how essential airplanes are for travel and life in the 49th state. While the essays in the book tend to be a little sappy and trite, the beautiful photographs more than compensate as the reader is shown the beauty of Alaska from the perspective of bush planes.

This is an incredible collections of aviation photos from the north country. Ground to ground as well as air to air and air to ground pictures fill this large coffee-table book. There are not just 3 or 4 great pictures, the book is full of them.
Worth every penny for those who want to gasp at stunning mountain views and shake your head with envy at the close-us of the hard working bush planes.
Truely a pilot's book, but my wife even enjoys looking at it with me.

Jill and Corina are at it again crime fighting with style and humor.

Corina and Jill will have you on the edge of your chair with suspence and laughter. Speed reader11