Alaska

by James A. Michener

Overview

Following the tradition that he has made his own in blockbuster bestsellers as Hawaii, Centennial, Chesapeake and Texas James A. Michener now gives us Alaska: the story of America's last great frontier land. We hear about the first humans to settle in this land of vast beauty and danger...about the explorers and whalers who "discovered" Alaska in the 18th century...about the explosive gold rush of the 1890s. And as we follow the fortunes of two families drawn to the territory seeking gold, the tumultuous events of the 20th century unfold.

Past and present, history and fiction, come together in this extraordinary epic story of sacrifice and courage, betrayal and devotion, challenge and exhilaration.

Peter Graves starred in the TV series "Mission: Impossible." His film work includes Stalag 17 and Airplane! He is currently the host-narrator of the PBS series "Discover: The World of Science"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780394551548
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/12/1988
Pages:	1100
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.45(h) x (d)

About the Author

James A. Michener was one of the world’s most popular writers, the author of more than forty books of fiction and nonfiction, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tales of the South Pacific, the bestselling novels The Source, Hawaii, Alaska, Chesapeake, Centennial, Texas, Caribbean, and Caravans, and the memoir The World Is My Home. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.

Date of Birth:

February 3, 1907

Date of Death:

October 16, 1997

Place of Death:

Austin, Texas

Education:

B.A. in English and history (summa cum laude), Swarthmore College, 1929; A.M., University of Northern Colorado, 1937.

Editorial Reviews

Another told-from-the-beginning-of-time Michener saga, this one featuring Alaska. The book begins a billion years ago. Its first characters are the mastadon and the woolly mammoth, followed by such other settlers as the Eskimos, Athapaskans, and Russians. Vignettes of characters as varied as the Danish navigator Vitus Bering, who explored Alaska for Russia's Peter the Great, and Kendra Scott, the young Colorado teacher who taught the Eskimo children during the recent Prudhoe Bay oil boom, illustrate the colorful history of this vast and exploited land. Early on the book is vintage Michener, but the momentum encounters an Arctic chill midway. Final sections are trite, uneven, and overloaded with stereotypes. Too cumbersome to be called fiction, but Michener fans will demand it anyway. Joan Hinkemeyer, Englewood P.L., Col.

Library Journal

Praise for Alaska
 
“Few will escape the allure of the land and people [Michener] describes. . . . Alaska takes the reader on a journey through one of the bleakest, richest, most foreboding, and highly inviting territories in our Republic, if not the world. . . . The characters that Michener creates are bigger than life.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
 
“Always the master of exhaustive historical research, Michener tracks the settling of Alaska [in] vividly detailed scenes and well-developed characters.”—Boston Herald
 
“Michener is still, sentence for sentence, writing’s fastest attention grabber.”—The New York Times

From the Publisher