Alaska by James Michener

Michener-ever a favorite.  He educates, he entertains, he is timeless.  That said, Alaska was not at the top of my list of his books.  The formula was the same...here is the earth and how the land was formed; here are the early inhabitants and the trials and tribulations that made them both unique and ubiquitous; here are some early people you can relate to who contributed to the evolution of the place; here is how things progressed up to the modern day.  Somewhere around 75% of the way through the book I started to lose interest and he never really brought me back around.  At 1,073 pages that's quite a slog to get through when you are not engaged.  Slog I did as much because I had no replacement book picked out as because I really wanted to finish this one.  Still, I am glad I read it.  As always, I learned something and will try to retain the information for use in Jeopardy-like challenges. 


Here are some things I learned which I suppose I knew at one time in the distant past but which did not really make it into my long-term memory:
>Russia settled the land which later became the state of Alaska and sold it to the US in the late 1860s for $7.2 million because they needed cash as a result of their involvement in the Crimean War. They had been trying to sell it to the US for years
>As a sign of friendship and solidarity, Russia sent battleships to US harbors during the Civil War to quietly send a message to other countries, including the British and French, that the US was to be left alone to settle its issues and not to be viewed as an easy target as a result of its infighting
>Following Pearl Harbor, Japan launched an offensive on the US territory in the Aleutian Islands south of Alaska and the fighting there was as bitter and entrenched as any in the European arena.  Whole islands (small islands, granted, but still, US soil) were occupied by the Japanese.  The Battle of Attu to retake one of the was the only WWII land battle fought on US soil.  (how did I now know that?)
>Business interests in Seattle, which I would never in a million years have connected with Alaska (though it seems natural enough if you think it through) controlled vast parts of the Alaskan economy for many, many years.
>There is a law referred to as the Jones Act which prevents non-US flagged ships from moving goods and/or people between two US ports.  Learning about the Jones Act both from the book and from my own follow up research shows that politics and law making is very likely no more contentious today then it was last century, or the century before...it just seems that way to us because we are living it.  And that keeping the idea that "this too shall pass" in the back of your mind is probably a good idea.


Quoteable quotes
On life in general:
"And he began to see his world as an amusing place where ridiculous things happened and where a man or woman could obey all the rules and avoid all the perils but still fall into some absurd situation at which their neighbors and the spirits themselves had to laugh, and not furtively either but with great guffaws.  The world was tragic, and fine men and strong animals died arbitrarily, but it was also so preposterous that sometimes the crests of mountains seemed to bend together in laughter."


And if the progressive politicians could capture the spirit conveyed in this paragraph, perhaps they could convince some folks that their ideas are not all bad:
"The potlatch was over.  Sam's neighbors carried their gifts to their canoes, each man aware that at some future time he would be expected to repay Sam with a gift of equal value, each woman wondering what gift she could sew or knit that would be as presentable as those that Sam's wife had given.  Thus the economy of the Tlingits was preserved and enhanced :  goods were exchanged; wealth was redistributed; obligations were established which would continue into the indefinite future"


Rating:  #5 Good Enough

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