Mush To Nome

Complete details of the Iditarod race is told in this beautiful picture book--how it began.

Jim Lanier had a good life going: a great family, a successful pathologist, a sometimes singer. Then he went to the dogs, ran the Iditarod in 1979, and has never recovered. With that ‘79 race as the book’s backbone, Jim tells its tale—entertaining, exciting, occasionally informative, and mostly the truth. From the bustle of metropolitan Anchorage to Front Street in Nome, it’s no how to do. If anything, it’s a how not to—how not to prepare, how not to train, how not to run. On the other hand, it’s how not to give in to the urge to quit when the going gets tough, in life and in this metaphorical Iditarod.

In 1978, Dick Mackey claimed the most dramatic victory ever in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, crossing the finish line in Nome a mere one second ahead of Rick Swenson after a two-week, 1,149 mile-run from Anchorage. Many years later Alaskans still shake their heads in amazement. In One Second to Glory, Mackey shares this and many other adventures: Making a home in the forntier state in the heady first day s of Statehood; Surviving the 1964 earthquake and helping rebuild Alaska; Mushing against "Doc" Lombard and George Attla in the heyday of sprint racing; Helping Joe Redington organize the Iditarod Trail SLed Dog Race; Experience 82 degrees below zero at Coldfoot, his famous Arctic Circle truck stop; Mackey's colorful stories are told in his own words in interviews with Lew Freedman, outdoor adventure writer for the Chicago Tribune and longtime former sports editor of the Anchorage Daily News. Freedman has written seventeen books about Alaska.

Balto, the great Alaska sled dog, has been dead since 1933. But he still stands larger-than-life on Dogdom's Mount Olympus, where the world's great canines are immortalized. Yet few people know Baltos true story. Only one small part has been told, and even it has been distorted. Several Balto books have been written. There's even a Balto animated movie, but it, too, is largely fiction. (Balto was NOT part wolf!) Like the books, the movie leaves off where this book begins — and tells the best part of the story. Balto was only three years old when he helped carry serum across Alaska from Nenana to Nome to save the town's children from diphtheria. As leader of the last dog team in the life-saving relay race, he became an overnight sensation — a BONEa fide international celebrity. But much more happened after that. Balto lived for eight more years. His days unfolded like a sled expedition to the North Pole, carrying him in an exhilarating rush over smooth snow one minute, an icy hummock the next. And how does the new story end? With a heart-thumping surprise that you can't imagine — and neither could have Balto. Hook up your harness, step into Balto's booties, and mush off to Balto's true story.

Jessica Cherry and Frank Soos have assembled a wide range of Alaska cycling voices, from the Gold Rush prospecting cyclists of the early 1900s to the ultra-endurance cyclists and bike packers of today.

Wheels on Ice reveals Alaska’s key role in bicycling both as a mode of travel and as an endurance sport, as well as its special allure for those seeking the proverbial struggle against nature. This collection opens with the first bicycle boom and the advent of the safety bicycle in the late 1800s, at approximately the same time gold was discovered in Alaska and the Yukon Territory. As bicycles evolved, Alaskans were among the first to innovate: the fatbike, for example, evolved from the mountain bike in the late 1980s into a wider-framed bike with fatter tires, making snow biking more accessible and giving birth to the Iditabike race. More recently, ultra-endurance cyclist Lael Wilcox rode all the major roads in the state, totaling more than 4,500 miles of gravel and pavement. Jessica Cherry and Frank Soos’s diverse group of stories covers cycling both past and present. From riders commuting in every kind of weather to those seeking long-distance adventure in the most remote sections of the United States, these stories will inspire cyclists to ride into their own stories in Alaska and beyond.

The Legacy is several stories, intertwined and layered, that reveal more and plumb deeper than any one story could alone. It is set against the tableau of a heroic mush to save Nome during the great diphtheria epidemic of 1925. It is a story of Philippe Morrell and his lead dog, Balto, who made the run and the people, places and events that made his life stand out above those who had condemned him to the life of a social outcast. It is also a story that spans one hundred years in the lives of the Morrells, a prominent Canadian family who built and controlled a powerful financial empire, but also of what they owed to the man who was their patriarch. Philippe faced the harsh elements and his own demons during a ragging blizzard in subzero temperatures, driving his dogs and himself with superhuman effort to deliver the diphtheria vaccine from Nenana to Nome across 650 miles of rough pack ice and frozen rivers. Near the end of a life filled with tragedy and triumph, at the extreme limit of human endurance where sanity and madness meet, on the verge of death itself, he finds redemption in himself. The Legacy is both a sprawling adventure, a powerful love story and an intimate character study where past, present and future are inextricably joined. In the end, it reveals what beats in the heart of a great family.

A Book of Information About Northwestern Alaska