Lew Freedman
Список книг автора Lew FreedmanIditarod Adventures
In IDITAROD ADVENTURES, mushers explain why they have chosen this rugged lifestyle, what has kept them in long-distance mushing, and the experiences they have endured along that unforgiving trail between Anchorage and Nome. Renowned sports writer Lew Freedman profiles 23 mushers—men, women, Natives, seasoned veterans, and some relatively new to the demanding sport, many of whom are so well-known in Alaska that fans refer to them only by their first names. The book also features interviews with administrators who organize the event and make sure it happens every year, volunteers, and others whose connection to the Iditarod is self-evident even if they don’t have an official title.
Jump Shot: Kenny Sailors
Kenny Sailors was a basketball star, and the inventor of the jump shot. He attended the University of Wyoming and was MVP in 1943 in college AA basketball. After WWII, he spent five years as an early player in the new NBA. As a youngster, Kenny was five‑foot‑seven but his older brother was six‑foot‑two so when playing basketball, Kenny had to jump up over his brother to get off a shot. That is how the jump shot was born, and Kenny used it in college and professional basketball. He played in Denver and several other cities whose team names have now changed, but he also played for the Boston Celtics with Bob Cousy. After he left the NBA, he moved to Alaska and in 1965 settled in the Glennallen area, where he was a fishing and hunting guide in the Wrangle Mountains for thirty‑five years. He now lives in Idaho, and his son lives and flies aircraft from Antioch, California.
My Season on the Kenai
The Kenai is a world-class salmon river that attracts fishermen from all over the world, but is also the “everyman” river of the great fishing paradise of Alaska because of its accessibility.
The Kenai River is special not only because world-record salmon are caught in its stunning green waters, but because it is on the road system and thus can be accessed by the average fisherman, not merely the well-to-do who pay huge sums to fish in remote Alaskan areas controlled by private lodges and that are approachable only by small planes.
In a state that takes at least a share of its identity from its image as The Last Frontier and concurrently as a fishing haven, the Kenai River is the lifeblood of a sporting world and industry that offers an incomparable fishing experience to the resident, the tourist, the hardcore fisherman, the beginner, and the expert.
Fishermen in the Lower 48 states, seduced by images of gigantic fighting salmon, dream of some day fishing the picturesque waters of the Kenai River. Fishermen who live in Southcentral Alaska, including Alaska's largest city of Anchorage, plot their fishing seasons around the arrival of king salmon, red salmon, and silver salmon. To all of them, the Kenai is a magical river. Not only is it the place of dreams, where an angler might catch a world record or world-class fish, it is, despite its nearness to the small cities of Kenai and Soldotna, still a wilderness. At one bend in the river there might be a hotel, a private summer home, or a forest since the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge also swallows the Kenai River.
The eighty-file-mile-long Kenai River is, more or less, two rivers. The upper river prohibits motorized boats altogether. The lower river features them. The upper river invites rafters and fly-fishermen. The lower river offers savvy guides who know each turn of the river, each rock’s placement, and the opportunity to fish for 70-, 80-, or 90-pound salmon through specially developed styles appropriate to the area and the species. The upper river allows for Dolly Varden and rainbow trout fishing. The lower river emphasizes big salmon.
Each summer thousands of anglers fish the Kenai River. They bring millions of dollars worth of business to the Kenai Peninsula while following their dreams and bringing home stories of wilderness fishing adventures.
Bradford Washburn, An Extraordinary Life
Here at last is the thrilling memoir of the legendary mountaineer Bradford Washburn, one of the last surviving explorers and adventurers of the twentieth century. Drawing from decades of memories, journals, and an exquisite photographic collection, Washburn completes the self-portrait of a man drawn to altitude, from his first great climb of Mount Washington at age eleven, through numerous first ascents of peaks all over the world, to handily scaling a climbing wall at eighty-eight.
Racing Toward Recovery
For the first time, Alaska musher and tribal leader Mike Williams shares his remarkable life story with veteran sports writer Lew Freedman. Williams is a man of many parts, a sports figure, a government figure, a leader of his people, a husband, a father, and a Native man with one foot firmly planted in the twenty-first century and another firmly planted in the roots of a culture that dates back 10,000 years in Alaska. Williams competed in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race fifteen times, and was once the only Yup’ik Eskimo musher, a symbol to all Natives around the state. Although he was never a top contender for the Iditarod title, he was a competitor whom everyone cheered because he resolved that to shed light on one of Alaska’s greatest threats to the health and future of its Native people, he would carry in his dog sled pages—pounds worth—of signatures of people who had pledged sobriety.
A Yup’ik Eskimo, Williams saw firsthand how alcohol could devastate people as surely as if they had contracted a deadly flu: each of his brothers had succumbed to alcohol-related accidents, incidents, or illnesses. Williams describes how he recovered from his dependence on alcohol through religion, loved ones, and racing dogs. For many years Williams carried those sobriety pledges in his sled, focusing attention on a troubling, seemingly intractable problem. Williams gained national attention, being profiled by CNN, Sports Illustrated, and Good Morning America. Fellow Iditarod competitors have voted him “the most inspirational musher.”
Thunder on the Tundra
This is the moving story of high school students in an isolated village at the top of Alaska starting a football team. Against long odds the Whalers had to practice and play in extreme conditions and travel hundreds of miles from home when they went on the «road,» flying for each game.They ended their first season victorious, while maintaining their subsistence hunter-gather culture.