"The quality of the color photos and essays in this book by Ken Wilson reflect an outstanding history of these historic islands and the people who lived on them."
—Bill Thies
"Economic and cultural uncertainties are not ignored, but The Aleutian Islands focuses on the energy, determination, and creativity that people bring to their everyday lives. This is a book that begins in the heart and addresses the heart."
—Ray Hudson
This collection of breathtaking photographs and captivating essays is a window into life in the remote island communities sandwiched between the North Pacific and the Bering Sea. These islands have been home to the Unangan people, also known as the Aleut, since America's earliest occupation. The book brings into clear focus, through text and image, the people, the landscape and the animals of this amazing archipelago that stretches from North America to Asia.
The photographs themselves pose questions that can only be answered by the island residents: the Unangans who write from a depth of ancestral attachment and the more recent arrivals, perhaps drawn by fortune, who have been captivated by the beauty of the region. Almost every image reveals the dramatic and temperamental weather that makes the islands at once forbidding and alluring: banks of fog, shafts of sunlight and the powerful and capricious winds.
Ten superbly qualified contributors provide chapters on the culture, environment, history, wildlife, economy and more. This volume is the most comprehensive, insightful and beautiful examination of the Aleutian Islands ever gathered between two covers.
