Results by title
209 books match the query 'Alaska' and 6 start with e
Empire's Edge
American Society in Nome, Alaska, 1898-1934Preston Jones
University of Alaska Press, 2006
In 1898, Nome, Alaska, burst into the American consciousness when one of the largest gold strikes in the world occurred on its shores. Over the next ten years, Nome’s population exploded as both men and women came north to seek their fortunes. Closer to Siberia than to New York, Nome’s citizens created their own version of small-town America on the northern frontier. Less than 150 miles from the Arctic Circle, they weathered the Great War and the diphtheria epidemic of 1925 as well as floods, fires, and the Great Depression. They enlivened the Alaska winters with pastimes such as high-school basketball and social clubs. Empire’s Edge is the story of how ordinary Americans made a life on the edge of a continent—a life both ordinary and extraordinary.
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Ends of the Earth
PoemsKate Partridge
University of Alaska Press, 2017
Ends of the Earth uses the landscape of Alaska as a testing ground for love and elegy. It is a poetry collection that contains both lyric responses to the urban Alaska environment and extended sequences that cycle between autobiography, mythic allusion, and the literary archive. In her work, Kate Partridge combines the fresh perspective of a newcomer with explorations of the landscape and lifestyles through allusions to classic literature.
While the poems turn an inquisitive, contemporary lens to the subject of Alaska, elements throughout the book are influenced by twentieth-century writers like Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore. The manuscript also combines personal experience with collaged material from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Walt Whitman's notebooks, and other classic sources, to investigate the ideas of love, isolation, and location. Through humor and observation, Partridge takes a new look at what it means to live in urban Alaska and the world at large.
While the poems turn an inquisitive, contemporary lens to the subject of Alaska, elements throughout the book are influenced by twentieth-century writers like Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore. The manuscript also combines personal experience with collaged material from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Walt Whitman's notebooks, and other classic sources, to investigate the ideas of love, isolation, and location. Through humor and observation, Partridge takes a new look at what it means to live in urban Alaska and the world at large.
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Entangled
People and Ecological Change in Alaska's Kachemak BayMarilyn Sigman
University of Alaska Press, 2018
Chronicling her quest for wildness and home in Alaska, naturalist Marilyn Sigman writes lyrically about the history of natural abundance and human notions of wealth—from seals to shellfish to sea otters to herring, halibut, and salmon—in Alaska’s iconic Kachemak Bay.
Kachemak Bay is a place where people and the living resources they depend on have ebbed and flowed for thousands of years. The forces of the earth are dynamic here: they can change in an instant, shaking the ground beneath your feet or overturning kayaks in a rushing wave. Glaciers have advanced and receded over centuries. The climate, like the ocean, has shifted from warmer to colder and back again in a matter of decades. The ocean food web has been shuffled from bottom to top again and again.
In Entangled, Sigman contemplates the patterns of people staying and leaving, of settlement and displacement, nesting her own journey to Kachemak Bay within diasporas of her Jewish ancestors and of ancient peoples from Asia to the southern coast of Alaska. Along the way she weaves in scientific facts about the region as well as the stories told by Alaska’s indigenous peoples. It is a rhapsodic introduction to this stunning region and a siren call to protect the land’s natural resources in the face of a warming, changing world.
Kachemak Bay is a place where people and the living resources they depend on have ebbed and flowed for thousands of years. The forces of the earth are dynamic here: they can change in an instant, shaking the ground beneath your feet or overturning kayaks in a rushing wave. Glaciers have advanced and receded over centuries. The climate, like the ocean, has shifted from warmer to colder and back again in a matter of decades. The ocean food web has been shuffled from bottom to top again and again.
In Entangled, Sigman contemplates the patterns of people staying and leaving, of settlement and displacement, nesting her own journey to Kachemak Bay within diasporas of her Jewish ancestors and of ancient peoples from Asia to the southern coast of Alaska. Along the way she weaves in scientific facts about the region as well as the stories told by Alaska’s indigenous peoples. It is a rhapsodic introduction to this stunning region and a siren call to protect the land’s natural resources in the face of a warming, changing world.
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Eskimo Girl and the Englishman
Edna Wilder
University of Alaska Press, 2009
The Eskimo Girl and the Englishman is a sequel to the delightful story Once Upon an Eskimo Time, which recounts the remarkable life of Minnie and her Eskimo mother as she comes of age in a traditional village on Alaska’s western coast. Resuming the tale on the day Minnie encounters her first white man, The Eskimo Girl and the Englishman relates the next century of Minnie’s adventurous life—painting a picture of early twentieth-century village life as Minnie and her Englishman marry and find the determination, strength, and courage to live life in the face of tragedy, rapidly changing technology, and unrelenting hardship along the Bering Sea. Accompanied by photographs of early Eskimo village life, the narrative poignantly captures a sense of a long-lost way of life on the Seward Peninsula.
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Eskimo Storyteller
Folktales from Noatak, Alaska New EditionEdwin Hall
University of Alaska Press, 1999
Now a classic in northern literature, The Eskimo Storyteller brings to life the words of Eskimo elders for a new generation of readers. This collection of folktales from northwest Alaska includes stories populated by amazing creatures, hard-bitten hunters, and strong-minded women. Two master storytellers, Edna Hunnicutt and Paul Monroe, introduce readers to the guiding principles of daily life in the Arctic and chronicle the devastating results when those principles are violated. Elegant line drawings by Claire Fejes illustrate the characters and key events.
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Exploring and Mapping Alaska
The Russian America Era, 1741-1867Alexey Postnikov and Marvin Falk
University of Alaska Press, 2015
Russia first encountered Alaska in 1741 as part of the most ambitious and expensive expedition of the entire eighteenth century. For centuries since, cartographers have struggled to define and develop the enormous region comprising northeastern Asia, the North Pacific, and Alaska. The forces of nature and the follies of human error conspired to make the area incredibly difficult to map.
Exploring and Mapping Alaska focuses on this foundational period in Arctic cartography. Russia spurred a golden era of cartographic exploration, while shrouding their efforts in a veil of secrecy. They drew both on old systems developed by early fur traders and new methodologies created in Europe. With Great Britain, France, and Spain following close behind, their expeditions led to an astounding increase in the world’s knowledge of North America.
Through engrossing descriptions of the explorations and expert navigators, aided by informative illustrations, readers can clearly trace the evolution of the maps of the era, watching as a once-mysterious region came into sharper focus. The result of years of cross-continental research, Exploring and Mapping Alaska is a fascinating study of the trials and triumphs of one of the last great eras of historic mapmaking.
Exploring and Mapping Alaska focuses on this foundational period in Arctic cartography. Russia spurred a golden era of cartographic exploration, while shrouding their efforts in a veil of secrecy. They drew both on old systems developed by early fur traders and new methodologies created in Europe. With Great Britain, France, and Spain following close behind, their expeditions led to an astounding increase in the world’s knowledge of North America.
Through engrossing descriptions of the explorations and expert navigators, aided by informative illustrations, readers can clearly trace the evolution of the maps of the era, watching as a once-mysterious region came into sharper focus. The result of years of cross-continental research, Exploring and Mapping Alaska is a fascinating study of the trials and triumphs of one of the last great eras of historic mapmaking.
[more]