Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 This is How it Was! October 25, 2008
Joe McGinniss catches the heartbeat of Alaska during pipeline days. He is right on the money! (No pun intended). It would be interesting if he wrote another book about Alaska now, with oil at its high, with our Governor running for Vice President, with many of our elected representatives under indictment or already indicted for a variety of crimes. It would make a real pot-boiler & page-turner! Please think about it Mr. McGinniss
 "Fiction" at its WORST. June 9, 2008
So McGinnis takes a few plane flights and is an expert on Alaska? What a joke. He also talks about a Moses Lake, Oregon! Moses Lake is in Washington, not Oregon. His poorly researched book and his foul language and racist attitude are OFFENSIVE. I do not recommend this book to anyone.
 Alaska: the city guy's view June 11, 2004
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
The "top note" of Joe McGinniss' story "Going to Extremes" is about what happens when a lot of folks from the lower 48 and a lot of money are thrown into Alaska at the same time--the late 1970s, when the pipeline was being built. McGinniss casts an urban reporter's jaundiced eye, for example, toward the drinking and drugs that seem like an inevitable consequence of people in the cold wilderness with nothing to do and some money.Sometimes he intends to be virtually comic, as when a newbie pipefitter offloads his pickup truck from the ferry in a Panhandle town unconnected to the rest of the world by road, or when a drug-addled prostitute runs in to a travel agency in Valdez, Alaska, pointing a gun at the travel agent demanding an immediate trip out of town (to get away from creditors). The agent settles her down and puts her in his truck--as though this sort of thing happened everyday-- while he finishes out his conversation with McGinniss inside. A long essay documenting McGinniss' trip to the far northern Brooks Range is dominated by his fear of bears (that's logical, I guess) and his city-slicker mountaineering inabilities, although it eventually rises to suggest the majesty of the land he was touring. In contrast to John McPhee's "Coming into the Country," written in the same era, McGinniss seems determined to remain a sardonic outsider, an observer of people and their weaknesses primarily, rather than an observer of nature. It's an insightful approach although I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of real Alaskans objected to it, and certainly I am hoping to avoid the gun-toting ladies of the evening on my upcoming trip to tour the state.
 An interesting read, but biased April 30, 2003
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
This book was a fun read for me, since I am from Alaska. Indeed, many of his characterizations about the people here are accurate--this state is full of quirky characters looking to escape one thing or another in their lives! It was also interesting to read about the places he visited, since I have been lucky enough to visit many of them.However, I found his blatant bias against development and the oil industry disturbing. I found myself contstantly wanting to remind him that without those planes and automobiles, which require oil in one form or another, he never would have been able to visit all the places in Alaska he wrote about. The first oil was just going through the pipeline when he was here, yet he had already made up his mind that oil development was "bad." I hope Mr. McGinnis doesn't drive a car or heat his home with oil--ditto for all the other environmentalists that want to lock up Alaska.
Great Characterization! January 29, 2003
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I read this book in the early 90's, just before I moved to Alaska. After spending 9 years in the Last Frontier, I still loved this book. One of the things I like best about it is that McGinnis doesn't romanticize the state and its people, as so many seem wont to do. His characterization is right on, and his descriptions are accurate...a number of folks ARE quirky, eccentric, social misfits looking to escape the trappings of "down south", and not everything works the way it's supposed to. You never know what to expect in Alaska, and I think McGinniss paints a humorous and accurate story of our 49th state.
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