The people behind the heroic rescue of Nome take second fiddle in the book to Man's Best Friend. Boyle's Fourth Grade class in academic 1966-7. Much of that description was surprisingly familiar I remember it from Mrs. The book also contained descriptions of the history of the Eskimos (Eskimo, contrary to urban legend apparently refers to snowshoes, not "Eaters of Raw Flesh" and is not a derogatory term). The book paints a vivid picture of early 20th Century Alaska, in the throes of the decline after the Klondike and Alaska Gold Rush of approximately 1897-1901. The story of the race would have been exciting on its own. The book includes in its bibliography another book about the Arctic I read and enjoyed, Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez. Nome had already been decimated by the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, described in The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. The book is nominally about the carriage of diphtheria antitoxin from the railhead near Fairbanks, Alaska to the coast at Nome, through some of the coldest temperatures that state has experienced, and in unusually fierce blizzards. This book was unexpectedly fascinating on many levels. I just finished reading The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemicīy Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury.
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