Chris McCandless walked into the deep woods of Alaska in April 1992 and was never again seen alive. Through diaries, interviews with family and acquaintances, and accounts of witnesses, John Krakauer traces the young man's fatal adventure and the life journey that led him to his death in an abandoned bus.

A tribute to the natural beauty of Alaska and the survival skills of its native residents describes how the author and her boyfriend relocated from an east-coast suburb to the extreme climates of Alaska's country, where harsh conditions forced them to acquire essential understandings about the weather, water, and fishing season.

An account of a kayak and canoe journey through the Brooks Range wilderness, impressions of urban life and political activity, and portraits of people in the bush make up a study of contemporary Alaska.

Setting off in an overloaded canoe, they journeyed down the Yukon River and walked upstream into the remote Brooks Range to build a cabin and live off the land. She was twenty-two, daughter of a famous woman adventurer. He was her childhood sweetheart. Four years later, they emerged from the Alaskan wilds. Now in her sixties, Jean Aspen updates her spellbinding tale of adventure in a harsh and beautiful land for a new generation. Arctic Daughter is...

Looking for Alaska is Peter's account of eighteen months spent traveling over twenty thousand miles in tiny bush planes, on snow machines and snowshoes, in fishing boats and kayaks, on the Alaska Marine Highway and the Haul Road, searching for what defines Alaska. Hearing the amazing stories of many real Alaskans--from Barrow to Craig, Seward to Deering, and everywhere in between--Peter gets to know this place in the way that only he can. His resulting...

John Muir first saw Alaska in 1879, only twelve years after it was purchased from Russia by the United States. Four more times, in 1880, 1881, 1890, and 1899, he was drawn back to this land of rivers and glaciers, sunsets and northern lights, campfires and Arctic stars. Few people have lived so many adventures, yet Muir was not a mere collector of adventure; the hazards he encountered -- and many were spine-tingling -- came as a result of his intense...

Depicts the life of environmentalist Margaret E. "Mardy" Murie, who, along with her husband, Olaus Murie, co-founded the Wilderness Society. Recounts the exceptional life of a woman who grew up in frontier Alaska, married a pioneer arctic biologist, and dedicated her life to the protection of the magnificent wild lands she so passionately loves. Features interviews, archival photographs and video clips, as well as footage of Mardy's later years and...

In 1899, railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman organized a most unusual summer voyage to the wilds of Alaska: He converted a steamship into a luxury "floating university," populated by some of America's best and brightest scientists and writers, including the anti-capitalist eco-prophet John Muir. Those aboard encountered a land of immeasurable beauty and impending environmental calamity. More than a hundred years later, Alaska is still America's most...

When construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline created an oil boom in the late 1970s, journalist Joe McGinniss headed north to find out what if anything was left of the 'last frontier.' He discovered, as one reader put it, 'mind-bending contradictions'--greed, waste, addictions, and racism, all of which contrasted with the vast untamed natural beauty and the honest, open, and independent spirit of the people. McGinniss focused mostly on the underbelly...

Thirty years ago, celebrated American writer Edward Hoagland, in his early fifties and already with a dozen acclaimed books under his belt, had a choice: a midlife crisis or a midlife adventure. He chose the adventure. Pencil and notebook at the ready, Hoagland set out to explore and write about one of the last truly wild territories remaining on the face of the earth: Alaska. From the Arctic Ocean to the Kenai Peninsula, the backstreet bars of Anchorage...