Book Review

Nature's State: Imagining Alaska as the Last Frontier. By Susan Kollin. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. xvii + 224 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, biography, index. $39.95, cloth; $16.95, paper.)

Susan Kollin analyzes literature, suggesting how invented images of Alaska serve American cultural needs. She addresses works of diverse authors, from John Muir to contemporary indigenous poets, and also refers to a few films. The concept of Alaska as a state of nature, she argues, is "a deeply cultural phenomenon" (p. 178). She acknowledges environmental writers who discuss the construction of "wilderness." She celebrates insights of Laguna Pueblo poet Leslie Marmon Silko, who states, "It is dangerous to designate some places sacred when all are sacred" (p. 57). In these ways, Kollin makes valuable contributions.

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Unsupported assumptions undermine Kollin's study. First, the construct of mass group imagination informs the book. She refers to "the popular national imagination," "the U. S. environmental imagination," "the dominant national imagination," "the American literary imagination," "the dominant geographical imagination of the United States," "the popular American imagination," and "the dominant national imaginary [sic]" (pp. 4, 5, 56, 79, 92, 117, 129). What data justifies her conclusion that such homogenized mentalities exist? How does this differ from the disturbing stereotyping of Americans that this reviewer, residing outside the United States, hears all too often?

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