Crooked Road: The Story of the Alaska Highway

Crooked Road: The Story of Alaska Highway By David A. Remley Fairbanks: AK. University of Alaska, 2008. xvii + 253 pp. 22 halftones, 3 line drawings, 1 map, notes, and index (paper), ISBN 9781602230378.Heavily based on lengthy quotations of oral sources and lacking a thesis asserted at book's beginning, this book might seem to deserve less attention among scholars than a work of standard academic format Indeed, preface is an elaborate disclosure of how book evolved from author's personal life, as if this book were a literary expression And author again grounds second preface accompanying this 2008 edition in his personal life, this time, in a dedication to respondents, many since deceased, who made this book possible . As this book unfolds, however, appreciation grows for subject's importance, which is well-grounded in sources, not only respondents', but in archival paper sources listed chapter by chapter (but not footnoted) at book's end . These notes are expanded into often lengthy discussions of their own .Part One opens with a 1910 quotation from Robert Perry, first North Pole explorer, alluding to attraction to traveling to North . After this vague beckoning, chapter one embodies descriptions of various people and circumstances attending travel along Alaska Highway in August 1973 and ends when author discloses in last sentence that he was among them . A year earlier, 31 years before the pioneer Alcan Highway approached (p . 13), American and Canadian administrators had created a plan for road's construction as a life-and-death necessity for Alaska and Canada at beginning of World War II, when Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor implied that empire's ambitious reach . Chapter two is opened with Canada's commitment to help build road because President Roosevelt could give no reassurance that United States could block an attack on Alaska . Thus, Remley's roundabout introductory narrative stages reader's personalized admission to subject as opposed to a more linear chronologyA tote road, road building jargon for a road to carry supplies, was completed in late 1942 on 1,400 miles between Dawson Creek, British Columbia, and Richardson Highway south of Delta Junction, Alaska . It took 1,221 miles to reach Alaska Interspersed through building description are such seemingly mundane matters as food . For example, [t]he Americans learned to appreciate traditional Canadian winter-trail hot drink, tea . There was no coffee (p . 35) . Different cultures also distinguished Americans from Canadians; former using much equipment and exercising considerable sophisticated engineering while Canadians, questioning of American plans, were intuitive, tenacious, and counted on humor. In this example of cultural group distinctions along highway, rare detailed evidence is gathered that often eludes material culture studies Remley dwells on one Canadian family at work on highway to assert that they embodied Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis about frontier life in North America, continually ready to adopt new ways . In big picture, it was differences between American and Canadian governments, however, that had daunted highway's completion since late 1920s . War forced its achievement .Remley goes on to describe that achievement but not without another narrative beginning, if only briefly, with trails ancients made across North America, and proceeding in greater depth to nineteenth-century trading companies, elaborating on paths to Gold Rush, commercial aircraft beginning in 1920s, and dogs - latter two absolutely certain transportation and companionship in back country (p . 109) . The reader will easily conclude that Alaska Highway was no latter-day novelty Canada feared American domination as a consequence of highway's construction even though United States' military was not interested, since more southern Aleutian chain and Alaska Peninsula appeared strategic . …

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