In Darkest Alaska Travel and Empire Along the Inside Passage Robert Campbell "Scholars of U.S. history will not want to miss this well-written and compelling book. . . . In Darkest Alaska illuminates a realm of potent anxieties about natives, nature, and national expansion which have shaped American culture and politics right down to the present day."--Louis S. Warren, author of Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody and the Wild West Show "A work of sweeping erudition and insight. If, as he so convincingly shows, Alaska was a Rorschach test for the American imagination, then Campbell is the peerless interpreter of its imperial and racial foundations. This is a serious trip in the best sense imaginable."--James C. Scott, Yale University "One of the most sophisticated and important studies of western American travel and tourism and one of the most significant histories of Alaska. . . . A brilliant study on many levels and a superb inaugural volume in the new Nature and Culture in America Series. It is theoretically rich, structurally innovative, very well written, deeply researched, and beautifully illustrated."--American Historical Review "The environmental particulars of Alaska (and the Northwest Coast in general) present a wonderful backdrop for his human history. . . . Written with style and grace, this carefully crafted work rests on a firm documentary foundation."--Journal of American History Before Alaska became a mining bonanza, it was a scenic bonanza, a place larger in the American imagination than in its actual borders. Prior to the great Klondike Gold Rush of 1897, thousands of scenic adventurers journeyed along the Inside Passage, the nearly thousand-mile sea-lane that snakes up the Pacific coast from Puget Sound to Icy Strait. Both the famous--including wilderness advocate John Muir, landscape painter Albert Bierstadt, and photographers Eadweard Muybridge and Edward Curtis--and the long forgotten--a gay ex-sailor, a former