I was a teenager in 1959 when Alaska became a state and I recall then from studies that it must surely be a desolate wilderness. The Russians, English and Americans explorers, sailors, narrative covers Tsar Peter the Great, Vitus Bering, George Steller and Aleksei Chirikov, Captain James Cook, William Bligh, George Vancouver and more. It is not until Chapter 3, that humans arrive, first on a small island of the Aleutians, about 12,000BPE however the Athapascans are the first, much much later the Eskimos and finally the Aleuts who were probably a mixture of Eskimo while the Tlingits were descended from the Athapascans. As only Michener can do, the historical is expanded upon, characters embellished or created and their descendants survive through the ages tying all the chapters back to the earliest times and memorializing events. It is neither light reading nor for someone lacking rudimentary literary, historical, sociological background.
I cannot begin to adequately review this book readers who enjoy learning as they read and spending a good long time delving into a work enjoy Michener. James Michener is one of my all time favorites if not the number one author, who else does such marvelous research and delves into history, geography, sociology, anthropology, biology, geology and all facets of whatever subject he tackled, perhaps David McCullough and is it not a coincidence both authors are Pennsylvanians with roots into Pittsburgh.Īn adroitly blended mixture of fact and fiction, woven through 12 chapters covering geolocigal concepts beginning far before the prehistoric era with Clashing Terranes and culminating with Alaskan statehood in the final chapter, Rim of Fire there is no history nor anthropology of a peoples untouched. The early movement of the woolly mammoth and the arrival of humans is almost comical but becomes tragic. It is a Michener tome, a wonderful work, over 1100 pages, very small print but I finished it last month read very little of it on our trip when I went through other books faster. First published in 1988, then in the paperback edition in 1989 this was one of the few Michener's I had not read although I have a shelf of complete works. In January I determined this was a must read prior to our August journey to Alaska and so it traveled south with us and then returned home.
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