This fascinating account of the development of aviation in Alaska examines the daring missions of pilots who initially opened up the territory for military positioning and later for trade and tourism. Early Alaskan military and bush pilots navigated some of the highest and most rugged terrain on earth, taking off and landing on glaciers, mudflats, and active volcanoes. Although they were consistently portrayed by industry leaders and lawmakers alike as cowboys—and their planes compared to settlers’ covered wagons—the reality was that aviation catapulted Alaska onto a modern, global stage; the federal government subsidized aviation’s growth in the territory as part of the Cold War defense against the Soviet Union. Through personal stories, industry publications, and news accounts, historian Katherine Johnson Ringsmuth uncovers the ways that Alaska’s aviation growth was downplayed in order to perpetuate the myth of the cowboy spirit and the desire to tame what many considered to be the last frontier.

Aeronautical Decision-Making and Aviation Safety in the Alaskan Operational Setting introduces the reader to the real-life experiences of aviators who fly in remote settings such as Alaska in the United States. It covers the challenges related to limited aviation infrastructure and support that affect human factors like aeronautical decision-making and its impact on aviation safety. Through a unique blend of meticulous case study analysis and semi-structured interviews with Alaskan pilots, this book offers a comprehensive understanding of the proverbial challenges of flying in Alaska. It uncovers the human factors elements specific to this environment, shedding light on the factors that influence a pilot’s decision-making, which may contribute to the high rate of accidents in Alaska and other remote regions. The content is supported by historical and socioeconomic perspectives on remote-setting aviation operations. Global perspectives are discussed with narratives from one author’s experiences flying to remote airstrips in Africa. The book concludes with practical recommendations to improve decision-making and aviation safety in these remote settings, making it a must-read for aviation professionals. This insightful research is not just for academic consumption. It is a practical guide for aviation professionals, including pilots, dispatch teams, air traffic controllers, and aviation support personnel. It offers valuable insights into the human factors involved in flying in Alaska, which can be directly applied in other aviation resource-constrained geographical regions, making it an indispensable resource for those in the field.

Alaska often looms large as a remote, wild place with endless resources and endlessly independent, resourceful people. Yet it has always been part of larger stories: the movement of Indigenous peoples from Asia into the Americas and their contact with and accommodation to Western culture; the spread of European political economy to the New World; the expansion of American capitalism and culture; and the impacts of climate change. In this updated classic, distinguished historian Stephen Haycox surveys the state’s cultural, political, economic, and environmental past, examining its contemporary landscape and setting the region in a broader, global context. Tracing Alaska’s transformation from the early postcontact period through the modern era, Haycox explores the ever-evolving relationship between Native Alaskans and the settlers and institutions that have dominated the area, highlighting Native agency, advocacy, and resilience. Throughout, he emphasizes the region’s systemic dependence on both federal support and outside corporate investment in natural resources—furs, gold, copper, salmon, oil—and offers a less romantic, more complex history that acknowledges the broader national and international contexts of Alaska’s past.

A tour of Alaska's history, landscape, geography, and culture includes photographs, illustrated sidebars, little-known facts, and maps as well as travel tips and practical recommendations for visitors to the forty-ninth state.

History, adventure, and science-the 18th century naturalist, Georg Steller, sailed to the north coast of North America and introduced its biological wonders to the world.

Walter Harper, Alaska Native Son illuminates the life of the remarkable Irish-Athabascan man who was the first person to summit Mount Denali, North America's tallest mountain. Born in 1893, Walter Harper was the youngest child of Jenny Albert and the legendary gold prospector Arthur Harper. His parents separated shortly after his birth, and his mother raised Walter in the Athabascan tradition, speaking her Koyukon-Athabascan language. When Walter was seventeen years old, Episcopal archdeacon Hudson Stuck hired the skilled and charismatic youth as his riverboat pilot and winter trail guide. During the following years, as the two traveled among Interior Alaska's Episcopal missions, they developed a father-son-like bond and summited Denali together in 1913. Walter's strong Athabascan identity allowed him to remain grounded in his birth culture as his Western education expanded and he became a leader and a bridge between Alaska Native peoples and Westerners in the Alaska territory. He planned to become a medical missionary in Interior Alaska, but his life was cut short at the age of twenty-five, in the Princess Sophia disaster of 1918 near Skagway, Alaska. Harper exemplified resilience during an era when rapid socioeconomic and cultural change was wreaking havoc in Alaska Native villages. Today he stands equally as an exemplar of Athabascan manhood and healthy acculturation to Western lifeways whose life will resonate with today's readers.

Chronicles the work of geologist Dave Hopkins, whose research solved the mystery of the existence of Beringia, the Bering Land Bridge.

Certain characteristic features of the Cypriot script - for example, its strategy for representing consonant sequences and elements of Cypriot Greek phonology - were transferred to the new alphabetic script. Proposing a Cypriot origin of the alphabet at the hands of previously literate adapters brings clarity to various problems of the alphabet, such as the Greek use of the Phoenician sibilant letters. The alphabet, rejected by the post-Bronze Age "Mycenaean" culture of Cyprus, was exported west to the Aegean, where it gained a foothold among a then illiterate Greek people emerging from the Dark Age. Woodard's study, a combination of philological and epigraphical investigation with linguistic theory, should be of interest to both scholars and students of classics, linguistics, and Near Eastern studies.

THE STORY: A mother from New Jersey roams the hills of Lockerbie Scotland, looking for her son's remains that were lost in the crash of Pan Am 103. She meets the women of Lockerbie, who are fighting the U.S. government to obtain the clothing of the