Tales of Alaska's Bush Rat Governor: The Extraordinary Autobiography of Jay Hammond, Wilderness Guide and Reluctant Politician

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Overview
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Overview

Jay Hammond's hilarious, adventure-packed autobiography is filled with candid insights on the independent people and faraway places of our nation's largest state.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In 1946 Hammond, a Methodist minister's son from New York State and a Marine pilot during WW II, realized his dream of moving to Alaska. Once there he had many jobs, including trapping, fishing, guiding, flying and working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He also served six years in the House beginning in 1959, the advent of statehood, then six more in the Senate. Hammond was elected governor in 1974 in an upset victory over the favored candidate who was backed by the press and the unions; in 1978 he was reelected, campaigning for a balance between industrial growth and preservation of the environment. While Hammond's political career is interesting, the main appeal of his autobiography is his portrait of his adopted state and its residents. Photos. Author tour. (May)

Booknews

Hammond served as a Marine fighter pilot during World War II, then fled civilization for Alaska's wilderness, where he became a trapper, bush pilot, wolf hunter, commercial fisherman, wilderness guide, and poet. He was governor of Alaska between 1974 and 1982, an environmentalist during the nation's oil crisis. His memoirs are lively and engaging. Distributed by Graphic Arts Center Publishing, Portland, Ore. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Roland Wulbert

To Alaskans, the word "bush" means the heart of their state and "bush rat" a true Alaskan like Hammond, who has been a fighter pilot, trapper, fisherman, guide, farmhand, amateur boxer, homesteader, and artist Rockwell Kent's neighbor. Hammond has survived the adventures a bush rat should, into which he launches us immediately: "It seemed to be a stupid way to die--healthy, uninjured, driving a team of dogs just miles from home. . . . Suddenly, with a rolling report, like rifle fire, the shelf of ice underneath us pitched into the river." He fills the book with such anecdotes, which may have you thinking he's only the kind of good ol' bush rat who nicknames his high-school buddy Robert Nichols "Rubber Nipples." But he was elected to Alaska's first state legislature and to the governorship during the tumultuous 1970s and 1980s. Yet he vends little insight into the politics of the pipeline years, mostly just more snappy yarns and lines like his observation that state representative Clem Tillon ("RepTillion") "works at cultivating the image of a simple rustic"--unlike Hammond, who does it effortlessly.