January 2011

Starting in 1879, the naturalist John Muir was so enthusiastic about Alaska that he is considered largely responsible for its first wave of tourism. “No excursion that I know of may be made into any other American wilderness where so marvelous an abundance of noble, newborn scenery is so charmingly brought to view,” he wrote. In 1884 cruise ships on the Inside Passage brought 1,650 visitors to the Great Land, as the Indians called it. Last year nearly a million tourists came.

Now, as then, the first-timer is likely to sign up for a tour. Each summer big outfits like Holland America-Westours and Tour Alaska deploy thousands of awestruck travelers over the rugged miles, briskly coordinating convoys of trains, buses, and ships. I was in the hands of Westours last summer on a twelve-day trip into Alaska’s interior, down the southeast coast, and over the Canadian border to the Yukon Territory. Reminders of the past were scattered everywhere—like the raw gold the jubilant miner George Carmack found in August 1896 along Bonanza Creek, “laying thick between flaky slabs like cheese sandwiches.”

1814 One Hundred and Seventy-five Years Ago 1864 One Hundred and Twenty-five Years Ago 1889 One Hundred Years Ago 1939 Fifty Years Ago 1964 Twenty-five Years Ago

By William H. Whyte; Doubleday; 356 pages.

In the tradition of his semiclassic The Organization Man , William H. Whyte’s new book adopts a friendly, journalistic style to examine urban sociology. Avoiding the jargon that so often mars works on the subject, Whyte paints a portrait of the American city in the second half of the twentieth century, with fascinating details on matters ranging from pedestrian behavior to the flight of large corporations.

As long as men and women have lived in cities, they have exhibited behavior that is as familiar as it is unexpressed. Whyte observes, for example, the “one hundred percent conversation"—the tendency of pedestrians to conduct their most intense conversations where traffic flow is the densest.

Photographs by Dudley Witney, text by Timothy Jacobson; W. W. Norton; 200 pages.

When it comes to books about long-distance train travel, a degree of romantic yearning is a given; the question is, How well is it handled? Very well, it turns out, in this lush, new large-format volume.

On the road again

Historic travel is the theme of the April issue. Once more we examine the past that always stands beside the present wherever you go in this country. Among the journeys:

The Powder River

Some students of the genre consider Warlock the finest Western ever written. Now its author, Oakley Hall, takes a drive through some rugged country he knows well to show us the Wyoming landscape that offered shelter to the Wild Bunch.

Walking Boston

Peter Davison is a poet, and it is the literary Boston that most interests him. But Boston being the protean place it is, we also discover the city of the Revolution, of the Back Bay, and of violent ward politics.

Where Lincoln lived

During the late Depression years, the biggest movie star was also the littlest, Shirley Temple. “It is a splendid thing,” FDR said, “that, for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles.”

If the Olympic Games demonstrate anything, it is that the urge to be the fastest lies deep in the human soul. And from the earliest days of humankind this urge has had its practical rewards beyond mere glory. The fastest caveman, after all, caught the most gazelles.

Today, the need to be the fastest lives on not only in individuals but in our business enterprises as well. All major automobile companies have invested heavily in racing at one time or another. They say, of course, that racing rigorously tests cars. But it helps mightily to sell them too. The corporate competition to win business by being the swiftest is not just an artifact of the automobile age, however. It goes back to the days of the Industrial Revolution in this country, when steamboats first appeared on American waterways.

I was pleased to see that the 1913 Notre Dame-Army game was remembered in the November issue’s “Time Machine.” While the body of the article correctly named Gus Dorais as the Notre Dame quarterback and Knute Rockne as the team captain, I was disturbed to find that the caption to the illustration attributed both positions to Mr. Rockne.

As one of Gus Dorais’s grandsons, I can attest not only that he was the quarterback but also that he was the punter, drop kicker (place kicking was not the style in 1913), and punt catcher.

As “Inventing Modern Football” points out, the rule changes made in 1912 lifted most of the restrictions on the forward pass. Gus Dorais was the first to demonstrate how these rules could be made into an offensive strategy, and thus bring football into the modern era.

“Inventing Modern Football” not only is a splendid story but proves again how unchanging our mores are. The problems besetting early football are being repeated against the current pernicious backdrop of drugs.

Watterson’s text is engrossing, J. C. Leyendecker’s paintings absolutely stunning. Where, oh where, today, are illustrators of the worth of the Leyen-deckers?