Green Alaska: Dreams from the Far Coast

Amazon.com Price: $13.95 (as of 19/04/2019 18:41 PST- Details)

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Description

In 1899 Edward Harriman, the railroad tycoon and most powerful man in The united states, assembled an elite crew of scientists and artists and took them on a two month survey of the Alaskan coast. Its 126 members included mountaineer John Muir, nature creator John Burroughs, biologist C. Hart Merriam, naturalist and Alaskan expert William Dall, bird artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes, ornithologist George Bird Grinnell, and photographer Edward Curtis. The expedition returned with 100 trunks of specimens and over 5000 photographs and coloured illustrations. The scientists produced 13 volumes of data that took 12 years to compile.
A century ago, Edward H. Harriman, the president of the Union Pacific Railroad and most likely the wealthiest man in The united states, put some of his wealth to visionary purpose: he outfitted a steamship with scientific instruments, hired a 65-member crew, and invited choice friends to accompany him on a cruise to Alaska. But more: he invited 30 more guests, “the nation’s top natural scientists, mainly, but also a couple of practical engineering types, some cultural enthusiasts, make a choice writers and artists and photographers.” Among those 30 “faculty” were the great naturalists John Muir, John Burroughs, C. Hart Merriam, George Bird Grinnell, and William Dall, who took the opportunity to study the flora, fauna, and geology of the glacier-carved coasts of what Burroughs referred to as “green Alaska,” infusing American natural-history literature with a stream of books and articles on the then little-known North. Nancy Lord, the writer of the fine Alaska memoir Fishcamp, retraces the course of the Harriman expedition, examining how much of Alaska has changed–but also how a lot more has remained much as her peers of a century ago saw it. Her graceful, energetic book is a fine contribution to the history of science, and a welcome addition to the shelves of any individual with an interest in natural-history writing and arctic exploration. –Gregory McNamee

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