One of the things that astounds me the most about Michener is that he takes non-fiction information, shares it with the reader in a really engaging way, and then seamlessly integrates it into a rich and colorful fictional narrative. But Alaska is super-duper EPIC! I cannot imagine how one person could write one book like Alaska much less all the other epics he wrote in his life. I did read another Michener – Centennial – and it was very epic as well. But he said in his 1992 memoirs that the circumstances of his birth remained cloudy and he did not know just when he was born or who his parents were.Īlaska is the most epic book I have ever read. Michener's entry in Who's Who in America says he was born on Feb. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, best known for its permanent collection of Pennsylvania Impressionist paintings and a room containing Michener's own typewriter, books, and various memorabilia. Toward the end of his life, he created the Journey Prize, awarded annually for the year's best short story published by an emerging Canadian writer founded an MFA program now, named the Michener Center for Writers, at the University of Texas at Austin and made substantial contributions to the James A. His first novel, Tales of the South Pacific, which inspired the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. James Albert Michener is best known for his sweeping multi-generation historical fiction sagas, usually focusing on and titled after a particular geographical region. “Michener is still, sentence for sentence, writing’s fastest attention grabber.” - The New York Times “Always the master of exhaustive historical research, Michener tracks the settling of Alaska vividly detailed scenes and well-developed characters.” - Boston Herald The characters that Michener creates are bigger than life.” - Los Angeles Times Book Review Alaska takes the reader on a journey through one of the bleakest, richest, most foreboding, and highly inviting territories in our Republic, if not the world.

“Few will escape the allure of the land and people describes. A spellbinding portrait of a human community fighting to establish its place in the world, Alaska traces a bold and majestic saga of the enduring spirit of a land and its people. As his characters struggle for survival, Michener weaves together the exciting high points of Alaska’s story: its brutal origins the American acquisition the gold rush the tremendous growth and exploitation of the salmon industry the arduous construction of the Alcan Highway, undertaken to defend the territory during World War II. Michener guides us through Alaska’s fierce terrain and history, from the long-forgotten past to the bustling present. In this sweeping epic of the northernmost American frontier, James A.

Alaska novel james michener