front cover of Fairbanks
Fairbanks
A Gold Rush Town That Beat the Odds
Dermot Cole
University of Alaska Press, 2008
The turbulent history of Fairbanks, Alaska is far less well-known than most urban histories. With this volume, Dermot Cole chronicles the rollicking backstory of a city that owes its beginnings to a cargo boat accident and the Klondike gold rush. Cole engagingly recounts how Fairbanks and its hardy residents survived floods, fires, harsh weather, and economic crises to see the city flourish into the prosperous transportation hub and government seat it is today. Fairbanksis ultimately a fascinating historical saga of one of the last cities to be established on the American frontier.
 
[more]

front cover of Fantastic Antone Succeeds
Fantastic Antone Succeeds
Experiences in Educating Children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
Judith Kleinfeld
University of Alaska Press, 1993
For every 1,000 live births in Alaska, between 2.1 and 6.6 babies are affected by FAS--a rate 6 to 18 times higher than the national average. Fantastic Antone Succeeds!describes in concrete, specific ways how to educate children with fetal alcohol syndrome/fetal alcohol effects (FAS/FAE). It communicates an optimistic message that is both true and appealing: with the right education, delivered by a nurturing individual in the home or in the school, many alcohol-affected children thrive.

The book consists of separate chapters written in a popular and accessible style by psychologists, teachers, and birth and adoptive parents of alcohol-affected children. Many chapters are personal stories with emotional power. A birth mother, for example, tells of her anguish when she realizes that she has recovered from her own alcoholism but her daughter cannot. This mother describes how she dealt with her grief, how she told her daughter the truth, her daughter's relief at finally understanding what was wrong, and how they both developed ways of overcoming her daughter's learning problems.

Other chapters describe how experienced teachers have learned to organize classrooms where alcohol-affected children can thrive and how therapists have learned to work with parents. One chapter summarizes medical knowledge of FAS/FAE and offers information useful for understanding a child's learning and behavioral problems and devising educational approaches. The book includes lists of important resources, organizations to contact, and descriptions of effective classroom practices for teachers.

Without minimizing the seriousness of FAS/FAE and the first priority prevention, Fantastic Antone Succeeds provides practical tools and strategies that can help alcohol-affected individuals and their families lead happier, more productive lives.
[more]

front cover of A Field Guide to Snow
A Field Guide to Snow
Matthew Sturm
University of Alaska Press, 2020
People love snow. They love to ski and sled on it, snowshoe through it, and watch it fall from the sky. They love the way it blankets a landscape, making it look tranquil and beautiful. Few people, however, know how snow works. What makes it possible for us to slip and slide over, whether that’s falling on sidewalks or skiing down a mountain? What makes it cling to branches and street signs? What qualities of snow lead to avalanches?

In A Field Guide to Snow, veteran snow scientist Matthew Sturm answers those questions and more. Drawing on decades of study, he explains in clear and simple ways how and why snow works the way it does. The perfect companion a ski trip or a hike in the snowy woods, A Field Guide to Snow will give you a new appreciation for the science behind snow’s beauty.
 
[more]

front cover of Field Techniques for Sea-Ice Research
Field Techniques for Sea-Ice Research
Edited by Hajo Eicken and Maya Salganek
University of Alaska Press, 2009

As much as one-tenth of the world’s oceans are covered with sea ice, or frozen ocean water, at some point during the annual cycle. Sea ice thus plays an important, often defining, role in the natural environment and the global climate system. This book is a global look at the changes in sea ice and the tools and techniques used to measure and record those changes. The first comprehensive research done on sea-ice field techniques, this volume will be indispensable for the study of northern sea ice and a must-have for scientists in the field of climate change research.

[more]

front cover of Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground
Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground
An Ethnography of Climate Change in Shishmaref, Alaska
Elizabeth Marino
University of Alaska Press, 2015
With three roads and a population of just over 500 people, Shishmaref, Alaska seems like an unlikely center of the climate change debate. But the island, home to Iñupiaq Eskimos who still live off subsistence harvesting, is falling into the sea, and climate change is, at least in part, to blame. While countries sputter and stall over taking environmental action, Shishmaref is out of time.

Publications from the New York Times to Esquire have covered this disappearing village, yet few have taken the time to truly show the community and the two millennia of traditions at risk. In Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground, Elizabeth Marino brings Shishmaref into sharp focus as a place where people in a close-knit, determined community are confronting the realities of our changing planet every day. She shows how physical dangers challenge lives, while the stress and uncertainty challenge culture and identity. Marino also draws on Shishmaref’s experiences to show how disasters and the outcomes of climate change often fall heaviest on those already burdened with other social risks and often to communities who have contributed least to the problem. Stirring and sobering, Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground proves that the consequences of unchecked climate change are anything but theoretical.

[more]

front cover of Fifty Years Below Zero
Fifty Years Below Zero
A Lifetime of Adventure in the Far North
Charles Brower
University of Alaska Press, 1994
Fifty Years Below Zero is an engrossing account by Charles Brower, the "King of the Arctic," of his life in the north. Brower shares his knowledge of whaling, pioneering, and Alaska Native life and customs before statehood, chronicling a period of important and rapid change in Alaska history with insight and humor. His story is also full of high adventure and rich with details about the many visitors who became his friends--explorers, whalers, traders, and missionaries. This volume is an excellent companion to the oral biography of Harry Brower, Jr., the son of Charles Brower, entitled The Whales, They Give Themselves (University of Alaska Press 2004).
[more]

front cover of Fighter in Velvet Gloves
Fighter in Velvet Gloves
Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich
Annie Boochever with Roy Peratrovich Jr.
University of Alaska Press, 2019
“No Natives or Dogs Allowed,” blared the storefront sign at Elizabeth Peratrovich, then a young Alaska Native Tlingit. The sting of those words would stay with her all her life. Years later, after becoming a seasoned fighter for equality, she would deliver her own powerful message: one that helped change Alaska and the nation forever.
In 1945, Peratrovich stood before the Alaska Territorial Legislative Session and gave a powerful speech about her childhood and her experiences being treated as a second-class citizen. Her heartfelt testimony led to the passing of the landmark Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act, America’s first civil rights legislation. Today, Alaska celebrates Elizabeth Peratrovich Day every February 16, and she will be honored on the gold one-dollar coin in 2020.
Annie Boochever worked with Elizabeth’s eldest son, Roy Peratrovich Jr., to bring Elizabeth’s story to life in the first book written for young teens on this remarkable Alaska Native woman.
[more]

front cover of Fighter in Velvet Gloves
Fighter in Velvet Gloves
Study Guide
Annie Boochever
University of Alaska Press, 2021
In 1945, Elizabeth Peratrovich stood before the Alaska Territorial Legislative Session and gave a powerful speech about her childhood and her experiences being treated as a second-class citizen. Her heartfelt testimony led to the passing of the landmark Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act, America’s first civil rights legislation. Today, Alaska celebrates Elizabeth Peratrovich Day every February 16, and Elizabeth Peratrovich was honored on the gold dollar coin in 2020.
 
Annie Boochever worked with Elizabeth’s eldest son, Roy Peratrovich Jr., to bring Elizabeth’s story to life in the first book written for young teens on this remarkable Alaska Native woman. Written about an Alaska Native civil rights leader, Fighter in Velvet Gloves has been incorporated in school curricula around the country, and won the 2019 Lumen Award for Literary Excellence, in addition to receiving many other national recognitions. This study guide is a custom work designed to help instructors teach the story of Elizabeth Peratrovich to students in grades 6 through 12.
 
[more]

front cover of Fighting for the Forty-Ninth Star
Fighting for the Forty-Ninth Star
C. W. Snedden and the Crusade for Alaska Statehood
Terrence Cole
University of Alaska Press, 2010
When Alaskans in the 1950s demanded an end to "second-class citizenship" of territorial status, southern powerbrokers on Capitol Hill were the primary obstacles. They feared a forty-ninth state would tip the balance of power against segregation, and therefore keeping Alaska out of the Union was simply another means of keeping black children out of white schools.

C.W. "Bill" Snedden, the publisher of America's farthest north daily newspaper, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, helped lead the battle of the Far North against the Deep South. Working behind the scenes with his protege, a young attorney named Ted Stevens, and a fellow Republican newspaperman, Secretary of Interior Fred Seaton, Snedden's "magnificent obsession" would open the door to development of the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay, inspire establishment of the Arctic Wildlife Range (now the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), and add the forty-ninth star to the flag.

Fighting for the Forty-Ninth Star is the story of how the publisher of a little newspaper four thousand miles from Washington, D.C., helped convince Congress that Alaskans should be second-class citizens no more.
[more]

front cover of Finding Mars
Finding Mars
Ned Rozell
University of Alaska Press, 2011
Finding Mars is an interwoven tale of science, travel, and adventure, as science writer Ned Rozell accompanies permafrost researcher—and inveterate wanderer—Kenji Yoshikawa on a 750-mile trek by snowmobile through the Alaska wilderness.  Along the way, Rozell learns about Yoshikawa’s fascinating life, from his boyhood in Tokyo to the youthful wanderlust that led him to push a wheeled cart across the Sahara, ski to the South Pole, and take a sailboat into the frozen reaches of the Arctic Ocean, spending a winter frozen in the ice near Barrow. It’s an always on-the-move account of a man driven not just by the desire to fill in the blank spots on a map, but also to learn everything he can about them—and a ringing testament to the power of science, enthusiasm, and individual inspiration.
[more]

front cover of Finding the Arctic
Finding the Arctic
History and Culture Along a 2,500-Mile Snowmobile Journey from Alaska to Hudson’s Bay
Matthew Sturm
University of Alaska Press, 2012
The history of the Arctic is rich, filled with fascinating and heroic stories of exploration, multicultural interactions, and humans facing nature at its most extreme. In Finding the Arctic, the accomplished arctic researcher Matthew Sturm collects some of the most memorable and moving of these stories and weaves them around his own story of a 2,500-mile snowmobile expedition across arctic Alaska and Canada.
During that trip, Sturm and six companions followed a circuitous route that brought them to many of the most historic spots in the North. They stood in the footsteps of their predecessors, experienced the landscape and the weather, and gained an intimate perspective on notable historical events, all chronicled here by Sturm. Written with humor and pathos, Finding the Arctic is a classic tale of adventure travel. And throughout the book,Sturm, with his thirty-eight years of experience in the North, emerges as an excellent guide for any who wish to understand the Arctic of today and yesterday.   
[more]

front cover of Finding True North
Finding True North
First-Hand Stories of the Booms that Built Modern Alaska
Molly Rettig
University of Alaska Press, 2021

Melting sea ice and rumbling volcanoes. Sled dogs racing through unnamed valleys.

These were the images that came to mind when Molly Rettig moved to Fairbanks, Alaska to work as a reporter at the local newspaper. An avid environmentalist, she couldn’t wait to explore the vast, untamed spaces that had largely been paved over on the east coast. But when her 72-year-old neighbor, Clutch, invites her on a tour of his gold mine—an 800-foot tunnel blasted into the side of his house–she begins to question many of her ideas about Alaska, and about herself. 

In Finding True North, Rettig takes us on a gripping journey through Alaska's past that brings alive the state's magnificent country and its quirky, larger-than-life characters. She meets a trapper who harvests all she needs from the land, a bush pilot who taught himself how to fly, and an archaeologist who helped build an oil pipeline through pristine wilderness. While she learns how airplanes, mines, and oil fields have paved the way for newcomers like herself, she also stumbles upon a bigger question: what has this quest for Alaska’s natural resources actually cost, and how much more is at stake?

This is a book about all the ways wild places teach us about ourselves. Rettig writes both playfully and honestly about how one place can be many things to many people—and how all of it can be true.

[more]

front cover of The Fires of Patriotism
The Fires of Patriotism
Alaskans in the Days of the First World War 1910-1920
Preston Jones
University of Alaska Press, 2013
In the early twentieth century, Alaska was facing an exciting future as the newest US territory. Yet just five years after its official designation, the country entered World War I and citizens were called to fight. Despite the threat of a looming economic collapse, Alaska sent more people per capita to war than any other state and displayed a patriotism that rivaled that of any of the states.

The Fires of Patriotism explores Alaska’s wartime experience, bringing to light new stories and new characters from a decade that shook the world. This multifaceted book explores the era through engaging stories and rare photos, offering a fresh perspective on World War I from a marginal land that forged its place in the greater unity of the country.
[more]

front cover of Flight of the Golden Plover
Flight of the Golden Plover
The Amazing Migration Between Hawaii and Alaska
Debbie S. Miller
University of Alaska Press, 2011

The remarkable story of the golden plover’s annual migration, this beautifully illustrated nature title for young readers sees the small but mighty plover embark on a six-thousand-mile flight between the frozen Alaska tundra and gentle grassy slopes of the Hawaiian Islands. Equally at home in his two very different habitats, the once-endangered golden plover has evolved many behaviors and adaptations that make it perfectly well-suited to each of its homes, and this book contains many fascinating facts about them. Readers are also introduced to the plover’s neighbors and friends—from the giant Hawaiian goose, or nene, to the musk ox, grizzly bear, arctic fox, and sandhill crane.

[more]

front cover of For the Sake of the Light
For the Sake of the Light
New and Selected Poems
Tom Sexton
University of Alaska Press, 2009

This collection of new and selected poems by the former poet laureate of Alaska, Tom Sexton, opens a door on the essence of life in Alaska and Maine. Sexton divides his year between the two states, and he captures here the small but powerful sensual details of day-to-day life in these contrasting, yet similar, environs. His carefully crafted verse distills the birch and aspen, lynx and ptarmigan, and the snow on high peaks. Through his poems we thrill to experience encounters with the wild, the seasons, and the sublime landscape.

     His language is clear, without tricks or fancy moves, yet his directness is powerful, and the effects are human”—Paul Zimmer, Georgia Review

[more]

front cover of From Snowshoes to Wingtips
From Snowshoes to Wingtips
The Life of Patrick O'Neill
Patrick H. O'Neill
University of Alaska Press, 2007
Patrick O'Neill grew up in Alaska in the 1920s and 1930s. He lied about his age to get his first job in mining and later became president of International Mining Corporation. He served in the Army Air Corps in World War II and operated mining companies in South America. There he saw the challenges faced by the local workers, and he provided schools for their children and improved wages and medical care.

O'Neill shares his story in this homespun tale full of anecdotes about mining and life in Alaska.

Published by the University of Alaska Foundation; distributed by the University of Alaska Press.
[more]

front cover of The Frontier in Alaska and the Matanuska Colony
The Frontier in Alaska and the Matanuska Colony
Orlando W. Miller
University of Alaska Press, 2008

During the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave more than two hundred families from some of the poorest areas in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan the opportunity to start their farms anew in the undeveloped land of Matanuska in Alaska. These transplanted midwesterners soon found themselves in a startling new climate and landscape that presented many unexpected challenges. Available for the first time in paperback, The Frontier in Alaska and the Matanuska Colony examines several case studies of these original families, dispelling many frontier myths and describing the reality of pioneering in Alaska. Despite the many impediments, Orlando W. Miller argues, much of the current agricultural success in Matanuska can be directly credited to the innovative farmers who settled there in the 1930s.

[more]

front cover of The Frontier Romance
The Frontier Romance
Environment, Culture, and Alaska Identity
Judith Kleinfeld
University of Alaska Press, 2012
Anyone curious about what drew people like Christopher McCandless (the subject of Into the Wild) and John Muir to Alaska will find nuanced answers in Frontier Romance, Judith Kleinfeld’s thoughtful study of the iconic American love of the frontier and its cultural influence. Kleinfeld considers the subject through three catagories: rebellion, redemption, and rebirth; escape and healing; and utopian community. Within these categories she explores the power of narrative to shape lives through concrete, compelling examples—both heart-warming and horrifying. Ultimately, Kleinfeld argues that the frontier narrative enables Americans—born or immigrant—to live deliberately, to gather courage, and to take risks, face danger, and seize freedom rather than fear it. 
[more]

front cover of The Fur Farms of Alaska
The Fur Farms of Alaska
Two Centuries of History and a Forgotten Stampede
Sarah Crawford Isto
University of Alaska Press, 2012
After its rudimentary beginning in 1749, fur farming in Alaska rose and fell for two centuries. It thrived during the 1890s and again in the 1920s, when rising fur prices caused a stampede for land and breed stock and led to hundreds of farms being started in Alaska within a few years. The Great Depression, and later the development of warm, durable, and lightweight synthetic materials during World War II, brought further decline and eventual failure to the industry as the postwar economy of Alaska turned to defense and later to oil. The Fur Farms of Alaska brings this history to life by capturing the remarkable stories of the men and women who made fur their livelihood.
“For more than 200 years ‘soft gold’ brought many people to Alaska. Fur farming was Alaska’s third-largest industry in the 1920s, and Sarah Isto writes of the many efforts, successes, and ultimately of the fur farming industry’s failure. This well-researched history contextualizes current fox elimination projects on Alaska islands and explains the abandoned pens one stumbles across. This is a story that has long needed to be written.”—Joan M. Antonson, Alaska State Historian
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter