Alumni Travel Reading: Alaska 2016

Through careful description of Alaskan explorations and with informative illustrations, readers trace the evolution of the maps of this era of Russian discovery of Alaska. This book is as much about map making as it is about Alaska and its exploration.

A lauded classic about the life of 22-year-old Chris McCandless as he leaves his suburban hometown of Annandale, VA, in search for enlightenment and transcendence in the heart of Alaska.

Life and Times of a Big River shares the story of Peter J. Marchand and his team of biologists as they explore the land that would become the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve.

Awarded as a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, William L. Iggiagruk Hensley takes us through his first-hand account of daily life as he and his family travel twenty-nine miles north of the arctic circle, a land without necessities such as electricity, running water, or healthcare. A member of the Iñupiaq people, Hensley discusses how he has taken his experiences, education, and passion to become a member of the National Congress of American Indians and the Alaskan House of Representatives, diligently fighting for the Natives of Alaska in the face of regional and national corporations.

Documenting what is often referred to as the, "forgotten war," author Brian Garfield provides an account of Alaska's history, with World War II's only battle on United States soil having taken place on the Aleutian Islands. Garfield discusses, through careful research, the conditions and impact of this battle on the soldiers, the state, and the nation as a whole.

Travelers' Tales Alaska takes you into the "Last Frontier" for adventures with wildlife and local culture. These first person narratives provide an inside view to the landscape, ecology and native culture of Alaska.

Purchase this book from Amazon or borrow it from your local library.

Penned by author Barry Scott Zellen after his nine-year residency in the Western Arctic, Zellen documents the will and tenacity of Alaskan tribes to gain back power and rights throughout the state in the face of corporate desires.

Discover all that Alaska has to offer through this extensive travel guide. From villages enriched with culture, landscapes marked by some of the world's tallest mountains, and the nightlife of cities, Lonely Planet Alaska explores the land of the country's largest state with all that travelers must see.

Before Alaska became a mining bonanza, it was a scenic bonanza. Prior to the great Klondike Gold Rush of 1897, thousands of scenic adventurers journeyed along the Inside Passage, the nearly thousand-mile sea-lane that snakes up the Pacific coast. Both the famous and the long forgotten returned with fascinating accounts of their Alaskan journeys. In Darkest Alaska explores the popular images conjured by these travelers' tales by drawing on lively firsthand accounts, archival photographs, maps, and other ephemera of the day. Robert Campbell chronicles how Gilded Age sightseers were inspired by Alaska's bounty of evolutionary treasures, tribal artifacts, geological riches, and novel thrills.

Though not traditionally thought of as strategic natural resources, glaciers are a crucial part of our global ecosystem. Comprising three quarters of the world's freshwater, they supply a steady flow of water for agriculture, livestock, industry and human consumption. On the other hand, these massive ice bodies can become highly unstable and collapse into downstream environments, resulting in severe natural events like glacier tsunamis and other deadly environmental catastrophes. Despite their critical role in environmental sustainability, glaciers often exist well outside our environmental consciousness. Glaciers: The Politics of Ice is a scientific, cultural, and political examination of the cryosphere - the earth's ice - and the environmental policies that are slowly emerging to protect it.

Chosen as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, Ivey writes of Jack and Mabel, a couple who have relocated to Alaska in the midst of the 1920's. Crumbling under the hardships of their circumstances, the two find solace in sculpting a child out of the season's first snowfall, but wake to find the sculpture gone--and a young, blond-haired girl named Faina in its place. Jack and Mabel can't help but grow to love this mysterious child as their own, but as one confides in the unknown,one also takes on the risks.

Based on an actual incident in the 1850's, four men held as indentured servants far up the coast of Russian Alaska look to the hazardous conditions of the Pacific ocean as their only escape. Jumping on board a stolen canoe, the men battle through starvation, a hostile environment, and local Natives as they trek twelve-hundred miles toward freedom.

Shaman and Kushtaka, both struck terror in the hearts of the Tlingit and Haida, for both possessed frightening supernatural powers. Among the Natives of the Pacific Northwest Coast, the shaman was honored as a person who could heal the body and spirit as well as see into the future. In his struggles to protect his people, he fought the kushtaka---an evil spirit-being who was half human and half land hotter---for the souls of dying persons. Theirs was a battle between the forces of good and evil, and today it remains a cornerstone in Tlingit and Haida mythology. Mary Giraudo Beck provides a powerful mix of history, legend, and adventure to dramatize the values and traditions of Tlingit and Haida societies.