This was a terrific story about the quest to find what is now Alaska. It gives insight into just how courageous these early exployers were. I can't comprehend of enduring those sort of hardships. Ford is also a good biologist and gives interesting commentary on the animal life. He also describes what may have been the first observation of a diving reflex in a marine mammal, the now extinct Northern sea cow. If you read this, it would be hard to complain about our current quality of life.

A true account of Vitus Bering's voyage from Russia to discover what is now Alaska. Anyone interested in the history of Alaska should start by reading this book, or someone looking for an actual true life adventure story that makes one appreciate the dangers encounted in the 1700's by these amazing explorers. This book is written from the journals of Georg Stellar, the naturalist on-board the boat that discovered Alaska. The first written account and identification of many species that Stellar discovered and writes about in his journals. One of which is extinct today and his writings are the only account of the massive Stellar Sea Cow. A fabulous account of these adventurors and their interaction with the beautiful, but deadly, Alaska coast and it's native people.

Excellent story of the discovery of Alaska by the famous explorer,Vitus Bering and naturalist, Georg Steller. Combines text from Steller's extensive notes and observations of the author.

A child of the '50s, I grew up in a small Midwestern town where I learned to hunt and fish in country very much like Mr. Ford's fictional Hardscrabble, USA. One of my first magazine subscriptions was to Field & Stream, in the pages of which I quickly became a devout vicarious member of The Lower Forty Shooting, Angling and Inside Straight Club -- even if in those days I hadn't a clue as to what an inside straight might be.

As things turned out, mine was to be a life membership. Those wry, folksy hi-jinksy denizens of Uncle Perk's hardware and dry goods store -- Doc Hall, Judge Parker, Angus McNab, Colonel Cobb, Cousin Sidney, Dexter Smeed and others -- stayed with me into manhood, forever fussing amongst themselves in some stove-warmed, nostalgic recess of my memory -- long after Mr. Ford passed away and Field & Stream became just another slick magazine with more ad inserts and attached postcards than real pages.

Thus, I met with excitement and a little nervousness the publication of this book -- The Corey Ford Sporting Treasury -- happy to be reunited with the old gang, yet wondering if they would stand up to the passage of time. I'd been disappointed before revisiting books that enthralled me as a youngster, finding as an adult that I couldn't recapture the magic.

Not so with this collection. If you'd believe me, I'd say the grey started leaving my hair and the pains from my joints as once again I perched unseen on a cracker barrel and listened to the old boys needling each other and plotting some practical joke on Deacon Godfrey or Owl Eyes Osborn -- a joke that more often than not would backfire on one of the club members.

But the real reward in discovering this treasure, besides the choicest of the Lower Forty's "Minutes," were the other pieces Mr. Ford had published over the years he was writer-in-residence at Dartmouth College.

By far the most profound -- in fact, one of the most moving stories I have ever read -- is the grand finale of the book, winning an entire Part of the book's three divisions. It's called "The Road to Tinkhamtown," and it's about an old hunter and his beloved old hound, Shad. This beautifully crafted story has just enough of Ford's signature droll humor in it to keep one guessing, but not enough ultimately to keep away the tears. And if you want to know why, you'll have to take the road to Tinkhamtown all by yourself.

The two stories by Corey Ford, first and last stories in the book, are wonderful as are all of his writings. They alone make the book a worthwhile purchase. The other stories in between, most by talented and well known writers, don't measure up. The revised edition of this book replaces better stories that were in the original edition.

This is the perfect gift to give that hard-to-buy-for someone in your life. All the stories in this book give you a lump in the throat, heart-warming feeling all over.