Social life in northwest Alaska : the structure of Iñupiaq Eskimo nations /

Burch (Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution) provides an ethnohistoric account of the Inupiaq people of the Kotzebue Sound area of Alaska. He bases his book on both documentary and oral data and covers the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is the last installment of a three-book series (The Inupiaq Eskimo Nations of Northwest Alaska, 1998; Alliance and Conflict: The World System of the Inupiaq Eskimos, 2005) and focuses on the social life of the Inupiaq. The book is well researched and documented throughout, and readers can trust its accuracy. It includes Inupiaq terms, along with the translations and explanations in the text and in a glossary. What readers may find the most valuable is the amount of very specific, detailed information about a wide range of topics from games to subsistence. Readers with an interest in the area will find the book useful and relatively easy to read. It contains a manageable amount of anthropological jargon. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. C. L. Thompson Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne