New Books
The Fur Farms of Alaska
Two Centuries of History and a Forgotten Sampede
Sarah Crawford Isto
After its rudimentary beginning in 1749, fur farming in Alaska rose and fell for two centuries. It thrived during the 1890s and agin 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. Fur Farms of Alaska brings this history to life by capturing the remarkable stories of the men and women who made fur their livlihood.
The City Beneath the Snow
Marjorie Kowalski Cole
The final collection of stories by award-winning writer Marjorie Kowalski Cole, The City Beneath the Snow is a portrait of contemporary Alaskans, their interactions, and their foibles. These stories reveal the moral decisions that lurk at unexpected corners in daily life as the characters confront a world at once magical and ordinary, joy-filled and tragic. Together, they give the reader an intimate portrait of a people and place more often portrayed through wilderness specials and reality adventure shows.
On Time Delivery
The Dog Team Mail Carriers
William Schneider
From the turn of the twentieth century in interior Alaska, dog team mail carriers were charged with maintaining the trail systems and carrying the mail until they were replaced in the late 1930s and '40s by airplane mail service. With the advent and widespread adoption of aviation, many of the trails were abandonded, and a generation of rural Alaskans has now grown up with few ties to the overland trail system that supported their grandparents and inspired modern traditions such as the world-famous Iditarod Race.
Gwich'in Athabascan Implements
History, Manufacture, and Usage According to Reverend David Salmon.
Thomas O'Brien
The most detailed and well-illustrated study of material culture for any northern Athabascan language group to date, Gwich'in Athabascan Implements reproduces pre- and early post-contact tools that are historically important to Athabascan people.