Description
Michael Engelhard’s style is so light-hearted and welcoming, it is tempting to imagine he just sat down and wrote No Place Like Nome with barely a pause. As an ethnographer and longtime wilderness guide, he travels with readers from prehistoric mastodons and mammoths to the present day, through the gold rush at the turn of the 20th century.
Join Engelhard as he tells about the artistry of carving walrus tusks, how a school outing revealed scads of ancient artifacts, and about the bar run by Wyatt Earp and his wife on Front Street when prospectors found gold on the beach.
The small town of Nome, in Alaska, perched on the Bering Strait, revels in characters: the naturalist author Sally Carrighar, (known as he Lemming Lady); Jesuit geologist Father Hubbard whose expeditions demanded ‘a strong back, a strong stomach, a dumb head and a guardian angel’; and Carl Lomen striving to sell reindeer as the ‘new American health meat.’ Along with tales of every activity from whaling to gathering qiviut (muskox wool), the pages are interspersed with superb photos of local people, places, and historic maps.
This is a grand book, instructive, revealing, above all entertaining, a gratifying escape from the Lower 48.