The Final Frontiersman

A portrait of the late Alaskan bush frontiersman, told by his cousin, traces his family's adventures on the land's frozen and remote outreaches, describing his unhappy childhood, decision to move his wife and two daughters to the bush, steadfast cultivation of survival skills, and untimely death. 35,000 first printing.

The inspiration for The Last Alaskans—the eight-part documentary series on the Discovery Channel! Called “[one of] the greatest life-or-death-tales ever told” (Esquire), James Campbell’s inimitable insider account of a family’s nomadic life in the unshaped Arctic wilderness “is an icily gripping, intimate profile that stands up well beside Krakauer’s classic [Into the Wild], and it stands too, as a kind of testament to the rough beauty of improbably wild dreams” (Men’s Journal). Hundreds of hardy people have tried to carve a living in the Alaskan bush, but few have succeeded as consistently as Heimo Korth. Originally from Wisconsin, Heimo traveled to the Arctic wilderness in his feverous twenties. Now, more than three decades later, Heimo lives with his wife and two daughters approximately 200 miles from civilization—a sustainable, nomadic life bounded by the migrating caribou, the dangers of swollen rivers, and by the very exigencies of daily existence. In The Final Frontiersman, Heimo’s cousin James Campbell chronicles the Korth family’s amazing experience, their adventures, and the tragedy that continues to shape their lives. With a deft voice and in spectacular, at times unimaginable detail, Campbell invites us into Heimo’s heartland and home. The Korths wait patiently for a small plane to deliver their provisions, listen to distant chatter on the radio, and go sledding at 44° below zero—all the while cultivating the hard-learned survival skills that stand between them and a terrible fate. Awe-inspiring and memorable, The Final Frontiersman reads like a rustic version of the American Dream and reveals for the first time a life undreamed by most of us: amid encroaching environmental pressures, apart from the herd, and alone in a stunning wilderness that for now, at least, remains the final frontier.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I visited Heimo Korth in Alaska in 2002. He and his family were the only subsistence family I knew in Alaska. They lived almost strictly off the land. I was impressed by their independence. #2 Heimo ferries me back to the cabin in a sled behind his Ski-Doo snowmachine. We cut through a maze of willows and then dip down into a creek bed. After a quarter of a mile, we climb the creek bank and Heimo stops the snowmachine. #3 Heimo’s cabin is situated far away from any trees, which makes it hard to build a cabin. But its location is its biggest asset. To the north, thick black spruce and to the south, a 1,000-foot hill protect it from the frigid winds that pummel this landscape. #4 The Korths’ cabin is no larger than a conventional suburban kitchen, ten by sixteen, four steps across, six and a half steps long. It is small in a climate where heat is precious. Edna has decorated the walls with the girls’ artwork, and next to their sleeping platforms the girls have tacked up photos from teen magazines.

The powerful and affirming story of a father's journey with his teenage daughter to the far reaches of Alaska Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to only a handful of people, is a harsh and lonely place. So when James Campbell’s cousin Heimo Korth asked him to spend a summer building a cabin in the rugged Interior, Campbell hesitated about inviting his fifteen-year-old daughter, Aidan, to join him: Would she be able to withstand clouds of mosquitoes, the threat of grizzlies, bathing in an ice-cold river, and hours of grueling labor peeling and hauling logs? But once there, Aidan embraced the wild. She even agreed to return a few months later to help the Korths work their traplines and hunt for caribou and moose. Despite windchills of 50 degrees below zero, father and daughter ventured out daily to track, hunt, and trap. Under the supervision of Edna, Heimo’s Yupik Eskimo wife, Aidan grew more confident in the woods. Campbell knew that in traditional Eskimo cultures, some daughters earned a rite of passage usually reserved for young men. So he decided to take Aidan back to Alaska one final time before she left home. It would be their third and most ambitious trip, backpacking over Alaska’s Brooks Range to the headwaters of the mighty Hulahula River, where they would assemble a folding canoe and paddle to the Arctic Ocean. The journey would test them, and their relationship, in one of the planet’s most remote places: a land of wolves, musk oxen, Dall sheep, golden eagles, and polar bears. At turns poignant and humorous, Braving It is an ode to America’s disappearing wilderness and a profound meditation on what it means for a child to grow up—and a parent to finally, fully let go.

Biography of Tom Lamb, a bush pilot from northern Manitoba, whose other activities included ranching, trapping, and wildlife conservation.

Recounts the life and times of Joseph Knowles, who became a public sensation when newspapers published a series of his dispatches from 1913 to 1916 describing his survival in the wilderness without any of the trappings of civilization.

A distinguished historian examines the development of the region and surveys the amalgamation of the aboriginal Indian, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American civilizations.

Explores the genres and sub-genres of nonfiction and provides an annotated bibliography of more than five hundred popular nonfiction titles, organized according to genre with a focus on titles published in the last decade.

Looks at what lies ahead for the American economy, energy policy, health care, politics, and international relations, and proposes the direction the nation must take

For critic John W. Aldridge, the fiction produced by young American writers after World War II lacked a vital advantage shared by the writers depicting the horrors of World War I: that of encountering those same horrors for the first time. For the WWII generation, there were no romantic illusions to lose, and thus no glories of war to see through eyes newly wise to the wholesale waste of the lives of young men like themselves. These essays are permeated by the question of whether these authors—who seemed to cynically accept the war as a necessary business best concluded quickly—could produce truly great literature out of their experiences. This book attempts an analysis of these authors as a whole, representing the horrors of their war for both their compatriots and later generations.