"This was an excellent book about a true pioneer! A very interesting story about the life of an amazing man. Sam was generous, courageous, and a friend to everyone who had the privilege of knowing him." Sam O. White was a tough, deep-voiced, six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound former Maine lumberjack and guide. From 1922, for half a century he crisscrossed wild Alaska by foot, with packhorses, dog teams, canoe, riverboat, and airplane. He helped map the Territory, trap fur, and became the world’s first flying game warden. White wrote exciting tales about his Alaska adventures, and those writings make up the bulk of this volume. In 1927, he arrived at Fort Yukon as a game warden when millions of dollars worth of fine arctic furs annually arrived there. The hardy frontier trappers considered the new game warden a joke, but he quickly taught them to respect conservation laws. He was frustrated by the impossibility of adequately patrolling thousands of square miles by dog team, boat, and on foot, so with his own money, he bought an airplane. Pioneer pilots Noel and Ralph Wien taught him how to fly it. White then startled remote trappers and others by suddenly arriving from the sky. In 1941, lack of backing from Juneau headquarters caused him to resign as a wildlife agent. At Fairbanks, Noel Wien made him Chief Pilot for Wien Airlines. For the next two decades White flew as an Alaskan bush pilot, admired for his flying skill and the superior service he provided residents who flew with him, and who depended upon him for receiving mail and supplies. He had countless friends—one hundred arrived for his seventieth birthday party. His integrity and principles were of the highest. Decades after his death, he is still spoken of with awe by the long-time Alaskans.

Between 1915 and 1955 adventure-seeking Frank Glaser, a latter-day Far North Mountain Man, trekked across wilderness Alaska on foot, by wolf-dog team, and eventually, by airplane. In his career he was a market hunter, trapper, roadhouse owner, professional dog team musher, and federal predator agent. A naturalist at heart, he learned from personal observation the life secrets of moose, caribou, foxes, wolverines, mountain sheep, grizzly bears, and wolves—especially wolves.

Above the Arctic Circle transports the reader back in time to the Alaska of 1911 into the Athabaskan Indian village of Fort Yukon and beyond. It was a time when travel was by trail or river on routes shared by man and wild beast, when communication reached only as far as the echo of one's voice, and when the first order of each new day was survival in the face of unyielding natural elements. This is the time and place chronicled in the personal journals of James A. Carroll: explorer, pioneer, dogsled musher, trapper, trader, husband, and father. It is an authentic first-hand account of a young man's first decade in the territory of Alaska, a straightforward telling of the adversity and adventures of life on the far north frontier. This story, told with honesty and more than a little humor, offers a kind of kinship connecting author and reader thereby extending a personal invitation to take the journey north through time with James A. Carroll -- Above the Arctic Circle.

“I owe Alaska. It gave me everything I have.” Says Sidney Huntington, son of an Athapaskan mother and white trader/trapper father. Growing up on the Koyukuk River in Alaska’s harsh Interior, that “everything” spans 78 years of tragedies and adventures. When his mother died suddenly, 5-year-old Huntington protected and cared for his younger brother and sister during two weeks of isolation. Later, as a teenager, he plied the wilderness traplines with his father, nearly freezing to death several times. One spring, he watched an ice-filled breakup flood sweep his family’s cabin and belongings away. These and many other episodes are the compelling background for the story of a man who learned the lessons of a land and culture, lessons that enabled him to prosper as trapper, boat builder, and fisherman. This is more than one man's incredible tale of hardship and success in Alaska. It is also a tribute to the Athapaskan traditions and spiritual beliefs that enabled him and his ancestors to survive. His story, simply told, is a testament to the durability of Alaska's wild lands and to the strength of the people who inhabit them.

Klondike Mike: An Alaskan Odyssey is Merrill Denison’s 1943 biography of Mike Ambrose Mahoney, a Canadian who travelled to the North in 1897 in search of gold and adventure. In Klondike Mike—a popular “Book of the Month Club” choice—Denison uses imagined omnipotent disclosures of his subject’s thoughts to enrich his writing with a sense of immediacy. In episodic scenes, readers accompany Mahoney through mishaps and adversity: Mahoney hauling a piano on his back up the Chilkoot Pass so that the Sunny Samson Sisters Sextette can get to Dawson to make their fortunes entertaining prospectors; or Mahoney setting a record with his team of dogs as they race across the frozen North from Dawson to Skagway in only fourteen days. The dramatic tension inherent in each of these adventures provides Klondike Mike with a surging narrative pulse and pace—a clever evocation of gold rush fever. In these ways, Klondike Mike demonstrates that Denison should be considered an early innovator of the genre now known as creative non-fiction. Richly illustrated throughout.

The twin trappers recount their unique life in the Lake Minchumina region in Alaska.

Imagine flying through wildly unpredictable weather conditions and over the unforgiving terrain of the Big Empty, with only yourself to rely on in life and death situations. This type of true grit adventure was a common occurrence for Alaska bush pilot Mort Mason, who encountered numerous white-knuckle situations while honing his skill--and his luck--in a profession that only a handful of pilots have had the stamina to endure. Flying the Alaska Wild is a heart-pounding, edge-of-the-chair collection of fascinating stories about the rough-and-tumble life of an Alaska bush pilot--straight from the pilot’s seat. Recounting thirty years of adventures, skilled storyteller Mason presents tales of his own experiences, and also tells the legendary stories of other old-time bush pilots.

“A necessary book for anyone truly interested in what we take from the sea to eat, and how, and why.” —Sam Sifton, The New York Times Book Review Acclaimed author of American Catch and The Omega Princple and life-long fisherman, Paul Greenberg takes us on a journey, examining the four fish that dominate our menus: salmon, sea bass, cod, and tuna. Investigating the forces that get fish to our dinner tables, Greenberg reveals our damaged relationship with the ocean and its inhabitants. Just three decades ago, nearly everything we ate from the sea was wild. Today, rampant overfishing and an unprecedented biotech revolution have brought us to a point where wild and farmed fish occupy equal parts of a complex marketplace. Four Fish offers a way for us to move toward a future in which healthy and sustainable seafood is the rule rather than the exception.