Book Review

When Chuck Konigsburg moved to Alaska in 1968 to teach at Alaska Methodist University, he was excited by the prospect of a new, undeveloped state unburdened by the mistakes of the past. He urged his neighbors to seize the opportunity to create a model, planned society and helped to found the Alaska Center for the Environment. For his pains, Konigsburg was fired from his job, blacklisted from other teaching positions, and treated as a pariah. He discovered the distressing central theme of Stephen Haycox's overview of Alaska's political and economic history: Most Alaska residents have no taste for innovation or idealism and harbor a strictly utilitarian view of the natural environment. Their interest was and is in making Alaska a northern version of Washington or Oregon (or perhaps Texas or Oklahoma), where insiders can make as much money as possible with the fewest possible restraints.	1
In seven succinct chapters Haycox surveys the troubled relationship between Alaskans and their environment, finding a remarkable continuity of perspective. Whether participants in one of the early "booms," which included fishing, gold mining, and military base building, or in the more significant oil boom that dated from 1968, white Alaskans were an extraordinarily narrow-minded, mercenary lot. Natural resources were valuable for their money-making potential, wilderness was the enemy, and public lands (over 90 percent of the total until the 1970s) were to be exploited by those who lived nearby. Apart from opposing anything novel, Alaskans were "oppositional." Contemptuous of the substantial Native minority, they were no less hostile to the federal government or to "outsiders" in general. In recent decades the international oil companies have been spared this treatment, despite their monopolistic practices, in part because of generous political donations and in part because the federal government and environmentalists are more convenient targets.	2
Haycox is himself a pioneer, devoting fully half his book to the comparatively little-known years since the Prudhoe Bay discoveries. He notes that with the start of a real boom, Alaska became the object of ferocious competition between the oil companies and other business groups, national environmental organizations, and civil rights organizations. He addresses the unprecedented land rush that followed, including federal legislation that funneled tens of millions of acres to Alaskan Natives, to parks and wilderness areas, and to the state. Except for the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989, and the recent fights over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska has been a quieter place. Haycox insists, however, that Alaskan attitudes toward economic opportunity and the environment are, in fact, as rigid as ever.	3
Haycox provides an excellent and often provocative summary of Alaska's colorful history. There is one significant omission. Although Haycox emphasizes attitudes and policies toward the environment, he says virtually nothing about Alaska's environmentalists, who were and are comparatively numerous and not at all reticent about attacking their neighbors' preoccupations. Chuck Konigsburg and Bob Weeden, one of the most influential Alaskans of the 1960s and 1970s, are cited once, but Celia Hunter, the best-known Alaska environmentalist of the last quarter century, is not mentioned, and the state's distinctive regional environmental organizations are disregarded. For this part of the Alaska story readers should consult Ken Ross's Environmental Conflict in Alaska (University Press of Colorado, 2000), which apparently appeared after Haycox had completed his manuscript.	4
Reviewed by Daniel Nelson, emeritus professor of history at the University of Akron. The author of numerous books and essays on industry and industrial relations, he currently is completing a book on environmental activism in Alaska.

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