Alaska, past and present -- Alaska's first peoples -- Baidarka: the Unangâx way -- Inua: the Eskimo world -- Athabascans of the interior -- People of the rain forest: Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian -- Crossroads of cultures: Alutiiq/Sugpiaq heritage in Alaska's Gulf -- Promyshlenniki and the Russian Fur Trade -- First contacts: the voyages of Bering and Chirikov -- In the Russian' wake: British and French explorers -- Malaspina and the Spanish incursions -- Lord of Alaska: Alexander Baranov -- Apostile of Alaska: Father Ivan Veniaminov -- Yankee whalers -- Seward's Folly -- Pursuing Manifest Destiny -- The fur seal rush -- Rumrunners of the Inside Passage -- Sheldon Jackson: Christian soldier of the Great Land -- John Muir and Glacier Bay -- Gold fever before the Klondike strike -- The Klondike stampede -- Stirring days in Skagway -- New Eldorados: Nome and Fairbanks -- The Yukon: highway to the interior -- Frontier tourism: Alaska with Baedeker -- After '98 -- Pioneer Judge: James W. Wickersham -- A young girl's Fairbanks -- King copper -- Anchorage and the Iron Horse -- Bush Pilots -- The "Thousand-Mile War": the Aleutian Campaign of World War II -- The "Military rush" and the Alaska Highway -- The Politics of statehood -- Not one land, but many -- Arc of fire: volcanoes of the Great Land -- Earthquakes and tsunamis -- Mountaineers and Denali -- Sydney Laurence and the northern landscape -- New Deal agriculture: The Matanuska -- Experiment -- Sled dogs and the Iditarod -- Growth, conservation, preservation: Alaska's essential tensions -- The story of salmon -- The fishing industry 1889 -- Hunting in Alaska -- Alaska's Marine Highway -- The oil boom -- The spill -- Coming to terms with Native land claims -- Pride and prejudice -- Caribou and North Country politics -- Renewed traditions: the renaissance of Native arts -- Last frontier or lasting frontier? -- ANCSA and its discontents -- The State of Alaska.