Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "Incomplete recall!" ( )

Another wonderful Michener saga. Beginning with wooly mammoth right up through Alaska's statehood. Many characters--all believable; plot lines that mirror history (I did look up lots of references and Michener stayed true to the history). This author has the great ability of putting a human face on the facts of history.

Several memorable characters include Sheldon Jackson, a Presbyterian minister who had such an impact on Alaska. Members of the Tlinget tribe, Russian explorers, gold miners enduring hardships, and women surviving in spite of difficult weather and social norms.

Too much to summarize but loved almost all (I do prefer the older history to the more modern, but still great). ( )

I basically lost the will to live by the last third of the book. Michener takes the history of Alaska from the Ice Age through modern times. ( )

I would give the first half of the book 4 stars, but the second half didn't rate above 2 stars for me most of the time. In particular, the salmon chapter was excruciatingly long (and for me it was boring as hell). I enjoyed the early parts of the book with some real historic people included with their stories. None of the later chapters had any characters based on real people so I didn't find it as compelling. I read this in advance of an upcoming Alaskan cruise and I'm glad that I did because I felt it at least gave me a flavor of things, but it was awfully long and got bogged down in spots. ( )

A generation before streaming video and binge watching, Michener invented the epic historical miniseries, but in book form. And like those historical mini-series (John Adams & The Crown come to mind) readers often come away form a Michener novel feeling like they've learned a lot, but hardly able to remember what they've learned. So it was - or perhaps so it seemed to be - with Alaska, one of Michener's last and longest historical novels about place. At 800++ pages in hardcover, all in 8 point (or did it just seem 8 point and was maybe 10 point type), you simply couldn't get away with a novel this long today.( Marketer would at the very least carve it up into a three volume boxed set), But, having said that, Alaska is a comprehensive (if in places ponderous) history of the Last Frontier from Big Bang to the Prudhoe Bay Pipeline. AT times I was riveted to this novel; at other times, truly bored, but the test, for me, anyway, is what I actually took away with me after reading it. SO before I wrote this review, I sat down and made list of what I remembered learning from Alaska: So, here in random order as I remembered them is a list: 1) the meaning of cabotage, and how it shaped and restrained Alaska's potential; the central importance of the Jones Act; the power of Seattle as the puppet-master of frontier development and ALska's long term existence as an extractive colony for Seattle business elites; the relative civility and orderly nature of Alaska under Russian government, as opposed to the chaos created by COngress's refusal to form a territorial government after the much-mocked purchase; the brevity of the Gold Rush, and the importance of Nome as well as the Klondike in that epic moment; Michener's romanticized view of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; the immense wealth that came to Native corporations s a result of the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement, and the legal exploitation of the new corporations that followed; the strategic importance of Alaska in World War II, the origins of the ALcan Highway, the Japanese invasion of the Aleutians;the effect of tundra tires on bush planes' flight characteristics; the unpredictability and danger of Alaskan weather and the wetness of the southeast; the violence between the Russian settlers and the Tlingit, Michener's vision of a racially diverse future Alaska rooted in traditional values and lifestyles AND adapted to the advantages of modernity. SO, that's what I learned that was subject to relatively instant recall. Was it worth the month of reading that this book took? No. Would I read it again if I hadn't? Until the 21st century Michener write-alike does along, yes, but not ungrudgingly. ( )