1992. 228 pp, photos, maps. The colorful history of our wildest state, in its great years of discovery, exploration and exploitation. Includes St Elias, other climbs. A well documented description of the pace and extent of Russian and American exploration in Alaska. The book focuses on reason of growth and lack thereof in the region in the 19th century. Sherwood also explains the difference in growth from the American 'western movement.' Alaskan history is very interesting. If you are at all interested in exploration or the American frontier and its writings, visit this book.
This narrative, covering thirty-five years of intense scientific and geographic exploration, is considered a milestone of Alaska historical literature. It details accounts of the men and institutions involved in Alaska's development and subsequent recognition.
These include a lively cast of characters such as William H. Dall, the scholar adventurer who became America's leading authority on Alaska; Ivan Petroff, the con man, plagiarist and forger who 'authored' two of the three most influential books on Alaska in the nineteenth century; and Henry T. Allen, an ambitious young army officer whose 1,500-mile journey in 1885 on the Copper, Tanana, and Koyukuk Rivers was called the greatest overland expedition on the continent since that of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark eighty years earlier.
With his readable prose, Sherwood provides a chronology of the state's scientific and biographical history and captures the natural beauty that lured explorers to this distant land. Paperback, new condition.
