front cover of Thousand-Mile War
Thousand-Mile War
World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians
Brian Garfield
University of Alaska Press, 1995
The Thousand-Mile War, a powerful story of the battles of the United States and Japan on the bitter rim of the North Pacific, has been acclaimed as one of the great accounts of World War II. Brian Garfield, a novelist and screenwriter whose works have sold some 20 million copies, was searching for a new subject when he came upon the story of this "forgotten war" in Alaska. He found the history of the brave men who had served in the Aleutians so compelling and so little known that he wrote the first full-length history of the Aleutian campaign, and the book remains a favorite among Alaskans.
The war in the Aleutians was fought in some of the worst climatic conditions on earth for men, ships, and airplanes. The sea was rough, the islands craggy and unwelcoming, and enemy number one was always the weather--the savage wind, fog, and rain of the Aleutian chain. The fog seemed to reach even into the minds of the military commanders on both sides, as they directed men into situations that so often had tragic results. Frustrating, befuddling, and still the subject of debate, the Aleutian campaign nevertheless marked an important turn of the war in favor of the United States.
Now, half a century after the war ended, more of the fog has been lifted. In the updated University of Alaska Press edition, Garfield supplements his original account, which was drawn from statistics, personal interviews, letters, and diaries, with more recently declassified photographs and many more illustrations.
[more]

front cover of The Gwich’in Climate Report
The Gwich’in Climate Report
Matt Gilbert
University of Alaska Press, 2022
A regional climate impact and adaptation report from the Gwich'in Athabascans of Interior Alaska, The Gwich’in Climate Report is a compilation of transcribed interviews between Matt Gilbert and northern Alaska Gwich’in Athabascan community members, elders, hunters, and trappers. The book explores Gwich’in insight and wisdom about ecology, climate, and the drastic effects of climate change on their landscapes and culture.
 
These interview subjects are at a “ground zero” of climate change, and their voices are largely absent from popular research on and discussion of the topic. Their traditional knowledge of Arctic flora and fauna, forestation, landforms, meteorology, airstream behavior, and river hydrology makes a significant contribution to the documentation of climate change. In addition, Gilbert bridges the Gwich’in worldview and that of Western science by including factual substantiation and citations that corroborate key observations in the Gwich’in transcripts.
 
A text that matters for its cultural and historical significance—as well as its potential impact on the way science and policy are conducted in rural Alaska and on public lands—TheGwich’in Climate Report will be of interest to residents of and stakeholders in the communities it represents as well as researchers concerned with on-the-ground conditions of ecosystems and Indigenous peoples most directly affected by climate change.
 
[more]

front cover of Attu Boy
Attu Boy
A Young Alaskan's WWII Memoir
Nick Golodoff
University of Alaska Press, 2015
In the quiet of morning, exactly six months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese touched down on American soil. Landing on the remote Alaska island of Attu, they assailed an entire village, holding the Alaskan villagers for two months and eventually corralling all survivors into a freighter bound for Japan.
One of those survivors, Nick Golodoff, became a prisoner of war at just six years old. He was among the dozens of Unangan Attu residents swept away to Hokkaido, and one of only twenty-five to survive. Attu Boy tells Golodoff’s story of these harrowing years as he found both friendship and cruelty at the hands of the Japanese. It offers a rare look at the lives of civilian prisoners and their captors in WWII-era Japan. It also tells of Golodoff’s bittersweet return to a homeland torn apart by occupation and forced internments. Interwoven with other voices from Attu, this richly illustrated memoir is a testament to the struggles, triumphs, and heartbreak of lives disrupted by war.
[more]

front cover of Wildflowers of Unalaska Island
Wildflowers of Unalaska Island
A Guide to the Flowering Plants of an Aleutian Island, Second Edition
Suzi Golodoff
University of Alaska Press, 2013
In the Aleutian Islands, wildflowers are king. Persistent low temperatures mean trees are unable to thrive, and so swaths of open tundra serve as the dramatic stage for a stunning variety of flowers. Wildflowers of Unalaska Island is the only guide to this flora, covering more than 160 species of flowering plants in a backpack-friendly book.

Each species is introduced and clearly defined and is accompanied by a photograph and line drawings. Many of these plants occur across a wide range of coastal Alaska; others are unique to the Aleutians. The introduction includes background on the unique geologic history, climate, and habitats of the archipelago to fully round out the user’s appreciation of the dramatic environment in which these hardy plants thrive.
[more]

front cover of Whiteout
Whiteout
Jessica Goodfellow
University of Alaska Press, 2017
When she was a toddler, Jessica Goodfellow’s twenty-two-year-old uncle, along with six other climbers from the 1967 Wilcox Expedition to Denali, was lost in an unprecedented ten-day storm blasting winds of up to three-hundred miles per hour. Just as North America’s highest peak is so massive that it has its own distinct weather system—changeable and perilous, subject to sudden whiteout conditions—a family whose loved one is irretrievably lost has a grief so blinding and vast that it also creates its own capricious internal weather, one that lasts for generations. Whiteout is Goodfellow’s account of growing up in this unnavigable and often unspoken-of climate of bereavement.

Although her poems begin with a missing body, they are not an elegy. Instead, Goodfellow struggles with the absence of cultural ritual for the uncontainable loss of a beloved one whose body is never recovered and whose final story is unknowable. There is no solace here, no possible reconciliation. Instead, Whiteout is a defiant gaze into a storm that engulfs both the wildness of Alaska and of familial mourning.
[more]

front cover of With a Dauntless Spirit
With a Dauntless Spirit
Alaska Nursing in Dog-Team Days.
Effie Graham
University of Alaska Press, 2003
"The itinerant nurses traveled by dog team and later by bush plane, experienced dangers and hardships their stateside colleagues could scarcely comprehend.... For the most part they matched the rigors of the environment with a dauntless spirit." So read a 1954 report on the women nurses who lived and worked in rural Alaska in the first half of the twentieth century. They traveled by dog team, river boat, or sea-going vessel to isolated communities with extreme weather conditions and poor sanitation. In the days before antibiotics, they encountered epidemics of diphtheria and typhoid, as well as the enduring presence of tuberculosis in all its forms.

With a Dauntless Spirit compiles a unique collection of journals, letters, and memoirs that give immediacy and vitality to the lives of these women. They ventured with a sense of duty and compassion to deliver much-needed medical services before the technical, medical, and social changes brought to Alaska by World War II and later by statehood. Despite physical hardships and emotional isolation, the spirit of these women is reflected in the adventurous, dramatic, and even joyous tone of their narratives. The arctic tests the character of many newcomers, and the nurses recount the very personal challenges that demanded choices and actions that ran contrary to their earlier socialization. Their personal sagas also have significant historical dimensions. They depict the major cultural encounters of their era that were to have such a profound impact on Alaska's future-with Native peoples, prospectors, aviation pioneers, and arctic explorers.

This collection was selected from personal and archival sources by Alaska nurse educators and historians, who provide background and commentary, a brief biography of each person, and historical photos and maps of the nurses' lives and work. With a Dauntless Spirit is a readable and engrossing account that makes an important and overdue contribution to Alaska history and women's history.
[more]

front cover of Ice Floe II
Ice Floe II
International Poetry of the Far North
Shannon Gramse
University of Alaska Press, 2011

The long-awaited second volume of the newly revived Ice Floe series, Ice Floe II features new and exciting works of poetry from a vibrant and diverse group of writers from Alaska, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Iceland, and beyond. All work is presented here in both its original language and in English translation. With contributors that include former Alaska poet laureate Tom Sexton, Riina Katajavuori, Yuri Vaella, Gunnar Randversson, and dozens of other established and emerging poets, this wonderful collection of voices from the northern latitudes will be a great read for all lovers of poetry and international literature.

[more]

front cover of Ice Floe III
Ice Floe III
Shannon Gramse
University of Alaska Press, 2012

The third volume of the revived Ice Floe series, Ice Floe III features new and exciting works of poetry by authors from Alaska, Canada, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. All work is presented in both its original language and in English translation. The contributors—Nancy Lord, Tom Sexton, Eira Stenberg, and Riina Katajavuori, among others—include established and emerging poets. This dynamic and vibrant collection of voices from the northern latitudes will be a great read for all poetry enthusiasts and devoted readers of international literature.

[more]

front cover of Ice Floe
Ice Floe
New & Selected Poems
Shannon Gramse
University of Alaska Press, 2010

Ice Floe, the celebrated and award-winning journal of circumpolar poetry, is here reborn as an annual book series. This first volume features the best of the journal's first seven years, along with evocative new poetry from Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. All work is presented in both its original language and in English translation. With contributors including former Alaska poet laureate John Haines, Gunnar Harding, Robert Bly, Lennart Sjögren, and dozens of other established and emerging poets, this wonderful collection of voices from the northern latitudes is a great read for all lovers of poetry and international literature.

[more]

front cover of Harriman Expedition to Alaska
Harriman Expedition to Alaska
Encountering the Tlingit and Eskimo in 1899
George Grinnell
University of Alaska Press, 2007
In 1899, George Bird Grinnell journeyed to Alaska on the Harriman Expedition, a scientific cruise from Seattle to the North Pacific. Accompanied by explorer John Muir and photographer Edward S. Curtis, Grinnell spent two months chronicling the lives of the Natives of Alaska and Siberia.

A keen observer of his surroundings, Grinnell provides a unique perspective on northern life in the late nineteenth century. He documented hunting techniques and material culture of the Eskimo of Siberia, as well as the totem poles and architecture of the Tlingit of Southeast. As a pioneer conservationist, Grinnell was one of the first to express concern over the effects of trade and industry on Alaska's peoples and natural resources.

Illustrated with photos and drawings by Harriman Expedition members, including Edward S. Curtis, this volume makes the work of a passionate observer available to a new generation of readers.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter