The College Hill Chronicles is an account of the formative years of a small subarctic university with big ambitions. Davis emphasizes the politics and personalities of the boardroom, but shows the cooperation and conflict that tied the boardroom debates to politics on a more grand scale in Juneau and in Washington.Davis doesn't judge the people who shaped the university, though he does marvel at them. He supports no theory of historical inevitabilities, except perhaps for Murphy's Law. Less interested in the philosophical explanation of the cause of events, Davis places more emphasis on people and how they dealt with those events. Administrators of any organization will appreciate and have empathy with the organizational pitfalls Davis describes. Some historians may find this approach unusual, but readers will enjoy the refreshing narrative of The College Hill Chronicles.

College Hill Chronicles: How the University of Alaska Came of Age

History

Davis, Neil

Americas

UA Foundation

When Alaskans in the 1950s demanded an end to "second-class citizenship" of territorial status, southern powerbrokers on Capitol Hill were the primary obstacles. They feared a forty-ninth state would tip the balance of power against segregation, and therefore keeping Alaska out of the Union was simply another means of keeping black children out of white schools. C.W. "Bill" Snedden, the publisher of America's farthest north daily newspaper, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, helped lead the battle of the Far North against the Deep South. Working behind the scenes with his protege, a young attorney named Ted Stevens, and a fellow Republican newspaperman, Secretary of Interior Fred Seaton, Snedden's "magnificent obsession" would open the door to development of the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay, inspire establishment of the Arctic Wildlife Range (now the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), and add the forty-ninth star to the flag. Fighting for the Forty-Ninth Star is the story of how the publisher of a little newspaper four thousand miles from Washington, D.C., helped convince Congress that Alaskans should be second-class citizens no more.

Fighting for the Forty-Ninth Star: C. W. Snedden and the Crusade for Alaska Statehood

Biographies & Memoirs

Cole, Terrence

Historical

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