Stan Cohen

Part of a multi-volume series, this is not a straightforward history but an assortment of photographs, first-person stories, newspaper articles, and other miscellanea on the Second World War in Alaska and the Canadian northwest. Things included are a 1944 dinner menu for the Baranof Hotel in Juneau; an interview with Attu schoolteacher Etta Jones (she was treated well in internment in Japan, but her weather observer husband was killed and all the Attu natives were deported); a letter from show more novelist Dashiel Hammet, who was stationed on Adak; various accounts of construction of the Alaska Highway and the CANOL pipeline; an interview with a Russian-speaking American meteorologist assigned to the Lend-Lease ferry program; an account of the Japanese evacuation of Kiska, facilitated by a radar set salvaged from the sunken British battleship Prince of Wales; wartime documents relating to the salvage of a Zero fighter from Akutan island; an official warning to female workers that they were not to have men in their barracks after midnight; and accounts of air and naval raids on Paramushiru, the main Japanese base in the Kurile Islands.

Interesting, sometimes sad, sometimes amusing. But you definitely need a more conventional history of the Aleutian campaign first to understand what’s going on. show less

First off, I love the C.C.C. They built so many great things, especially state parks, I think we need to start it up again. A little more mandatory though. Make everyone at 18 that is a citizen of the U.S. enlist for at least one year to dedicate their time and efforts to giving back to society; be it forestry, building a road, cleaning up a mess. Something to help build a sense of giving to the community, a mandatory volunteer ism if you will. Anyway, I digress. This book covers only a show more small fraction of what the C.C.C. did during the New Deal era, but since there are so few books about the C.C.C. as a whole (most are regional, small press coverages), this is probably the most pictorially definitive so far. show less

Detailed descriptions with multiple pictures (B&W and color) of past and present (1992) covered bridges. Detailed construction sketches of some.

Smoke jumpers: Are the U.S. Forest Service. Airborne firefighters trained in "Aerial fire detection and fire suppression." Hearty parachutists who pioneered aerial fire control starting 1939. Outstanding photographs. A well-researched history that is admired by firefighters and parachutist alike. Clear writing frames this Smokejumping Pictorial History in facts