Böcker utgivna av University of Alaska Press

When Captain Cook died on Hawaii in 1780, Britain was already at war with France and Spain, who had allied themselves with her rebellious American subjects. The new United States secured its independence in 1783 and, as peace resumed, all three rival European powers turned again to considering the opportunities revealed by Cook's work in the Pacific. Further expeditions were soon dispatched: some were successful, some disasterous, and the achievements of some are still too little known. This book looks at six of Cook's successors and their Pacific voyages: at Arthur Phillip, founder of the first British colony in Australia; the Comte de Laperouse, whose French scientific expedition vanished without a trace; William Bligh, first in the ill-fated Bounty but then successfully in the Providence and in a Spanish expedition forgotten in the oblivion of his later political disgrace; George Vancouver's controversial voyage to northwest America; and Matthew Flinders' charting of Australia and long imprisonment by the French on Mauritius.

"Cold Latitudes depicts, in precise and spare portraits, the landscapes, cultures, and animals of the circumpolar regions. McGuire's writing reveals the Arctic and Antarctic regions as environments bustling with lives and ways of life that are coming increasingly under threat by climate change. These essays add a refreshingly intimate and human side to a conversation dominated by the often-inaccessible language and perspective of environmental science. Though the observations are the highlight of this collection, each essay has narrative momentum to match its setting"--

"Arctic people live in and observe the Arctic environment year-round. Intimate knowledge of the environment and environmental changes is fundamental to their survival. They frequently depend on natural resources for their livelihood. This book presents a review of the capabilities, good practices, opportunities and barriers of community-based environmental monitoring programs in the Arctic, with a focus on decision-making for resource management"--

"Cabin 135 exists as place and idea, abode and quirky companion. As place, the house offered abundant opportunities to explore and contemplate decisions made by previous residents. As an abstraction, the log-built cabin both anchored and propelled my speculative notions of time and place. Eventually, I looked outward, beyond the house toward the microcosms of garden and yard and on toward a wider terrain. Nature meanders through my life as an ongoing theme, whether semi-tamed garden, national park, or wild-seeming forest. My narrative journey samples history, gardening, and nature as well as grappling with a many-faced house. Within the thematic structure of this book, I learn to pay more attention to my surroundings-sometimes with a broad-brush approach such as considering a swath of vegetation, other times, contemplating only a small plot of forest or garden, or a patch of wall inside the house. While searching for narrative larger than myself, everything I experienced, pondered, and tinkered with became part of my story and I puzzled over how we change places in both minuscule and wide-ranging ways"--

"In this book, close to one hundred men and women from all over southwest Alaska share knowledge of their homeland and the plants that grow there. They speak eloquently about time spent gathering and storing plants and plant material during snow-free months, including gathering greens during spring, picking berries each summer, harvesting tubers from the caches of tundra voles, and gathering a variety of medicinal plants. The book is intended as a guide to the identification and use of edible and medicinal plants in southwest Alaska, but also as an enduring record of what Yup'ik men and women know and value about plants and the roles plants continue to play in Yup'ik lives"--

Reaching 20,320 feet into the clouds, the peak of Denali is the highest and coldest summit in North America. In this novel of adventure and ambition, based on actual events, four men set out to conquer it.

Collects twenty-three stories that show the evolution of the adventurer's work, from ducking avalanches near the Gulf of Alaska to searching for the most pristine tundra on the continent, and from writing haiku on Denali in the depth of winter to decrying oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.