FEATURED AUTHOR - After graduating from Duke University, Glen Dawson owned and operated a flexible packaging manufacturing plant for 23 years. Then, he sold the factory and went back to school to get his Master's degree in biostatistics from Boston University. When he moved to North Carolina, he opened an after-school learning academy for advanced math students in grades 2 through 12. After growing the academy from 30 to 430 students, he sold it to Art of Problem Solving. Since retiring from Art of Problem…
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Recent comments: User reviews
I love Jack London for the vividness of his words and phrasing… like how the referee uses his toe to ”flirt” the stray water bottle out of the ring.
I also love Jack for his uber-intense emotional dissections. He sorts through everyone’s feelings — even the uncomfortable ones that stay deeply hidden — to take exacting stock of exactly what’s at stake.
It’s a series of beautifully crafted tales about the native peoples of Alaska and the dreadful ways they fall apart when infiltrated by another culture — my culture, in fact, the merciless and insatiable white man.
And from there on out, it’s carnage! carnage! carnage! Carnage inspired by religion… carnage to avenge stolen dogs… carnage when tradition is pushed aside, when famine hits, when trade goes awry, when illness hits. And it's fabulous.
So I do consider myself a feminist. But I’m not really the offendable type. This was so bad and deliberately offensive as to be just gd hilarious.
Case in point…
By the end, big boss eventually must acknowledge that Lani are people. (And by the way, if that’s the big question of the book, why put the answer in the title?) He flies into a bitter moral outrage, at once self-blaming and self-righteous. “What kind of man did you take me for?!” and such.
UM — you’ve spent centuries enslaving, selling, and breeding a race of beings that think, talk, sing, cry, and worship gods. But NOW, because you know we can inter-breed, NOW you feel bad?
“Which makes me — what?” cries Boss, clutching his head. “A murderer? A slaver? A tyrant? What am I?”
But here’s what rules: Doc — who worked to prove that Lani are human but really totally hearts Boss — leaps to his defense.
“An innocent victim of circumstances,” chides Doc.
Oh yes he did.