My standards for books about Alaska and the Inside Passage are high after reading Alaska Blues, Passage to Juneau, Coming into the Country, Going to Extremes, and various similar books. (I even have one more -- The Curve of Time -- sitting on my "to read" shelf.) Tip of the Iceberg falls short of those standards.
Adams introduces his "3000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska" as following in the footsteps of the 1899 Harriman Expedition, similar to how Tony Horwitz followed Captain Cook in Blue Latitudes. Harriman was a railroad tycoon who brought a large team of scientists and naturalists on an all-expenses-paid steamship trip from Seattle to Siberia. The team published a popular multiple volume report when they returned. Adams spends a couple of chapters introducing members of the team, but then rarely mentions them again. He refers far more frequently to John Muir's previous visits to the area.
That's the organizational problem. The other problem is that Adams chooses hackneyed details to illustrate his points. He talks about Alaskans being conservative by mentioning their guns and how they refer to "the Soviet state of Seattle." His natural descriptions all start to sound the same.
Adams introduces his "3000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska" as following in the footsteps of the 1899 Harriman Expedition, similar to how Tony Horwitz followed Captain Cook in Blue Latitudes. Harriman was a railroad tycoon who brought a large team of scientists and naturalists on an all-expenses-paid steamship trip from Seattle to Siberia. The team published a popular multiple volume report when they returned. Adams spends a couple of chapters introducing members of the team, but then rarely mentions them again. He refers far more frequently to John Muir's previous visits to the area.
That's the organizational problem. The other problem is that Adams chooses hackneyed details to illustrate his points. He talks about Alaskans being conservative by mentioning their guns and how they refer to "the Soviet state of Seattle." His natural descriptions all start to sound the same.
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