GOLD RUSH URL
Steve Levi is the author of more than 100 books, half of them on Alaska history. His Alaska history books focus on the Alaska Gold Rush and bush flying history. His fiction books are impossible crimes. An impossible crime is one where the detective must figure out HOW the crime was committed before he can go after the perpetrators. Levi’s latest books are available from www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi and at www.stevelevibooks.com.
ALASKA NONFICTION HISTORY BOOKS
Archie Ferguson
Archie Ferguson is the last of the original fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants Alaska bush pilots to be the subject of a biography. Dubbed “Alaska’s Clown Prince,” he added many hilarious chapters to Alaska’s history. He is also the originator of the “Arctic Bump,” a current practice of airline pilots who give a blast of power as they fly over the Arctic Circle to give gullible tourists the impression that the air north of the Arctic Circle is different than that south of the Arctic Circle. As far as his title “The Craziest Pilot in the World;” that was given to him by The Saturday Evening Post in its December 1945 issue. Ferguson, who died in 1967, was an excellent example of the colorful character/con men who made Alaska what it is today.
Archie Ferguson: https://youtu.be/tBKrJRoDB90
Rats Nest of Rails
That the Alaska Railroad was ever built is astonishing. It was constructed over the most treacherous terrain in the world during the most violent political era in United States history. The workforce included anarchists, Bolsheviks, socialists, syndicalists and labor union organizers against the backdrops of the First World War, Spanish Influenza, Russian Revolution, American troops in Siberia to keep Russian Socialism from our shore, Japan’s relentless gobbling of colonies from Southeast Asia to Siberia, and the Great Red Scare. It was built by the United States military to supply the United States Navy with coal and, in the process, closed down private sector coal mining in the Territory of Alaska – to the great anger of the private sector. Then there were the scammers, land speculators, Natives and their land claims, blacks and discrimination, sedition, payment in scrip, permafrost, freezeup/breakup, ration stamps and environmental damage. A RAT’S NEST OF RAILS is an in-the-weeds look at what it took to construct the only government-funded railway in American history.
Rat’s Nest of Rails https://youtu.be/k095pL17qaA.
Boom and Bust in the Alaska Gold Fields
The Alaska Gold Rush is the least studied era in American history. If you pull up “Alaska Gold Rush” on Google, you will get the Klondike. The Klondike Gold Rush took place in the Yukon Territory of Canada. It lasted 18 months and covered an area of about 800 square miles. The Alaska Gold Rush lasted 40 years, from 1880 to the First World War and covered an area one-fifth the size of the Lower 48. BOOM AND BUST IN THE ALASKA GOLD FIELDS is the first book to examine the Alaska Gold Rush using Federal documents, trial transcripts, newspapers, diaries and memoires for the entire 40 years of the strike.
The Human Face of the Alaska Gold Rush
THE HUMAN FACE OF THE ALASKA GOLD RUSH is an on-the-ground, nuts-and-bolts look at one of the most fascinating yet, at the same time, least studied eras in American history. . This work is a compendium of the real people, stories, events and tales taken from newspapers, trial transcripts, government reports, memoires and letters of the era and footnoted just in case the reader ‘does not believe’ something to be true.
The Human Face of the Alaska Gold Rush: https://youtu.be/Y7cqZpQMI_s
Bonfire Saloon
BONFIRE SALOON is a collection of 41 narrative poems supported with historic photographs of actual Alaska Gold Rush individuals who gathered at the Bonfire Saloon in Nome on the night of December 3, 1903. Seven of the narrative poems are available online Publication Consultants.com. Four the narrative poems are on YouTube.
Connie the Wiggler https://youtu.be/HV37PCHp6lU
Jimmy the Goat https://youtu.be/SoiA_SCQ8Nk
Maggie The Bag https://youtu.be/oMy1-JCjj4M
Marshal Jew Bob https://youtu.be/_9qkoJ0rz9M
Cowboys of the Sky
Right after the grizzled sourdough panning for gold the most enduring Alaskan image in the mind most people in the Lower 48 is the bush pilot. And for good reason. Alaska was a land made for the airplane. Even in this modern age, one-third of Alaska lives in communities that do not have a road link with the rest of the United States. Other than the once-a-year barge, everything must come in by plane. From toothpicks to beefsteak and mail to medicine, everything “flies” in or it does not come in at all. COWBOYS OF THE SKY is an historical look at the history of bush flying from the 1920s to the 1960s – and the men and women who had to be ‘cowboys of the sky’ to survive.
Alaska Gold Rush Illustrated Narrative Poems
Galesburg-Alaska Mining and Development Company
Seward Gold Robbery:
The Phantom Dogsled
Funded by the Alaska Humanities Foundation
Alaska Gold Rush Audio History
Audio History of the Alaska Gold Rush
Funded by the Alaska Humanities Forum
ALASKA HISTORY PODCASTS
Why Did Japan Twice Attempt to Take Alaska?
E. T. Barnette, the man who embezzled the entire town of Fairbanks – AND GOT AWAY WITH IT!
What Really Happened to the SS Jessie
Richard Willoughby and “The City in the Mist”
The Most Lovable Conman of the Alaska Gold Rush
Alaska’s Ghost Ship, the CLARA NEVADA – and the $17 Million in Gold that Vanished
Amazon Audio Web Page
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Steven+C.+Levi&i=audible&ref=dp_byline_sr_audible_1
Amazon Author Page
Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/SteveLevi99524
LinkedIn Page:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-levi-3b86582/recent-activity/all
Readers and Writers Book Club
Short Stories and Serialized Novel
www.readersandwritersbookclub.com
Alaska Historical Publication Association
The Alaska Historical Publication Association is a 501 C (3) based in Anchorage, AK. Its address is PO Box 241467, Anchorage, AK 99524. Its EIN is 92-0167724. It can be reached at scl@parsnackle.com.
QR
Contact Steve Levi: