Author: Stephen Haycox
Publisher: OREGON STATE UNIV. PRESS, Apr 2002
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 0-87071-536-4
Synopsis
Describes how the drive to extract natural resources has shaped Alaskans' understanding of nature & their relationships with the region's Native people. 6x9 inches, 192 pgs.
More Information
Since the arrival of white settlers, Alaska has been dependent on the development of successive natural resources- fur, then gold, salmon, copper, timber, and now oil. In Frigid Embrace, Stephen Haycox explores how the drive to extract natural resources has shaped Alaskans' understanding of nature and their relationships with the region's Native people.
Vast, wild, and remote, Alaska has long been perceived as the last American frontier, where adventurous, self-reliant settlers could carve a new life through sweat and sheer strength of will. The truth is, however, that Alaska is supported by the highest per capita federal spending in the nation. And rather than escaping the consumer-oriented urban culture of mainstream America, Alaskan settlers have replicated it on the last frontier.
Frigid Embrace offers a revealing look at the social and political impact of Alaska's economic dependence, with chapters devoted to milestones such as the discovery of the Prudhoe Bay oil field and the Exxon Valdez debacle. It presents for a wide audience a compelling account of Alaska's colonial struggles and offers a key to understanding the historical roots of current environmental controversies.
BOOK REVIEW:
"In clear and compelling style, master historian Steve Haycox puts in perspective the elements, events, and conflicts that shaped Alaska culture and politics . . . it rates a place with the classics on how the West was won."
-John Strohmeyer, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of
Extreme Conditions: Big Oil and the Transformation of Alaska
BOOK EXCERPTS:
Table of Contents
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Preface
Introduction: Alaska History and Opposition
Chapter 1: A Good American Town
Chapter 2: Pioneer Alaskans, Their Environment, and Alaska Natives
Chapter 3: At Any Cost: Pioneer Alaska and Economic Development
Chapter 4: Bonanza: Prudhoe Bay and ANCSA
Chapter 5: "Big Oil" ANCSA, and the Transformation
Chapter 6: Debacle: The Exxon Valdez, The Tongass Forest, and the ELF
Chapter 7: Dividend Alaska
BOOK'S IMPORTANCE:
A series of books that probe the relationships between cultural and environmental subjects west of the Rockies. Series Editor: William L. Lang.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Stephen Haycox is a Professor of History at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and the author of Alaska: An American Colony. A resident of Anchorage for more than thirty years, he has written widely on culture, Native peoples, and law and politics in the history of Alaska, the American West, and the Canadian North.
