A Yankee minister's non-conformist son, after serving as a Marine fighter pilot in the South Pacific during World War II, flees the demands of civilization for a life of solitary self-sufficiency in Alaska's wilderness . . . only to become the nation's most unlikely and perhaps most innovative governor from 1974 to 1982 during the nation's oil crisis.Beginning in 1946, Jay Sterner Hammond lived a life of high adventure as a bush pilot, trapper, commercial fisherman, and wilderness guide. But neither his crash landings and mid-air engine failures (13 of them!), broken bones and blizzards that stranded him in remote corners of Alaska, nor his encounters with murder, mayhem, and angry brown bears - all of which he writes about with entertaining irreverence - prepared him for the predatory power politics he also describes with humor and insight.This is an extraordinary story of a man in love with his adopted land and grateful for the life it provides. In nearly half a century, Jay Hammond has stepped lightly on the land, hardly leaving a permanent footprint - except for the log cabin homestead he built on the shore of remote Lake Clark, far from the nearest road or neighbor. Yet the unique Permanent Fund he championed as governor, with its annual dividends, has helped send thousands of young people to college, brought a share of the oil wealth to all Alaskans, and changed his state forever. Read Less