"Companion to the PBS series NATURE: bears of the last frontier"--Dustjacket.

Bears are North America's most complex and controversial predator, both loved and hated for their majesty and power. Will Troyer's introduction to the natural history of Alaska's brown bears is both enchanting and informative, told with the objectivity of a biologist, the resonant voice of an outdoorsman who has spent decades in bear society, and breathtaking photography. Troyer was a pioneer in the study of brown bears. Convinced that scientific research was the only antidote to widespread fear and misinformation about one of Alaska's largest predators, he gathered data with primitive equipment and endured hair-raising adventures. His career spanned dramatic changes in approaches to bear management that ranged from extermination to conservation, a history of human-bear interactions that he recounts with unusual insight and first-hand knowledge. Troyer offers a holistic description of bear biology and behavior, an account of bear-human interactions, and practical advice for viewing and photographing bears. Into Brown Bear Country offers an intimate, realistic view of the lives of Alaska's coastal bears. Entertaining and readable, it will be enjoyed by all readers of nature literature and is an essential starting point for anyone visiting bear country.

Melissa Cook shares her Alaska adventures, joys, struggles, and daily life in the Last Frontier with heart-pounding excitement and humor.

Alaska looms as a mythical, savage place, part nature preserve, part theme park, too vast to understand fully. Which is why C. B. Bernard lashed his canoe to his truck and traded the comforts of the Lower 48 for a remote island and a career as a reporter. He soon learned that a distant relation had made the same trek northwest a century earlier. Captain Joe Bernard spent decades in Alaska, amassing the largest single collection of Native artifacts ever gathered, giving his name to landmarks and even a now-extinct species of wolf. C. B. chased the legacy of this explorer and hunter up the family tree, tracking his correspondence, locating artifacts donated to museums, and finding his journals at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Using these journals as guides, he threw himself into the state once known as Seward’s Folly, boating to remote islands, hiking distant forests, hunting and fishing the pristine environment, forming a landscape view of the place that had lured him and “Uncle Joe,” both men anchored beneath the Northern Lights in freezing, far-flung waters, separated only by time. Here, in crisp, crystalline prose, is his moving portrait of the Last Frontier, then and now.

Goats, glaciers, ice worms, and igloos teach the ABCs of the Last Frontier, where Z is for zero temperatures. Ages 3 and up.

An alphabetical introduction to the state of Alaska.