Customer Reviews

Fashion Means Your Fur Hat Is Dead: A Guide to Good Manners and Social Survival in Alaska

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When my wife and I first moved to Alaska in 1987 we wanted to find out what Alaskans were like so we could try to fit in. We looked around and found Mike Doogan's guide - plus all of his weekly articles giving advice on how to live like a real Alaskan. (The other guide we found was Jeff Lowenfells.) I took Mike's advice seriously! Now 16 years later I had a chance to listen to Mike in person and he said his newspaper column was a humor column! So now I have all this stuff in my driveway - so my house will look like a real Alaskan home - and what am I going to do with it all? So beware! Reading this book is not for those who want real advice. It is instead a book joking about some things some Alaskans do, but not how you should really try to live just to fit in. But if anyone reading this would like to buy some stuff for your driveway - please give me a call!

If you have ever gotten the chance to meet or visit with the folks from rural Alaska you will know these are facts of live. Told in a very humorous way. Good reading you can't put down. Great for folks that may never get there but want to know the facts of Alaska life!

The book is hilarious and gives a great perspective on what Alaskan ideas and perspectives are like, although it really applies more to the bush than to a cosmopolitan city (can I really say that without a snicker? No, but it's as close to it as what Alaska has) like Anchorage or maybe even Fairbanks now. He's talking about what Fairbanks and NorthPole were like 20-30 years ago. But overall still pertinent and extremely funny. I've actually bought and given away two of these books in an effort to help my friends and family understand what Alaska is really like and do so in an enjoyable way. What Patrick F. McManus is to camping in general is this guy on Alaska.

I sent this to a friend who had just moved to Alaska. He found it very entertaining and it gave him some laughs.

I didn't find this book particularly funny. It has its moments, sure, but the overall impression I got was "outdated": old jokes, every old Alaska cliche from sourdough to cheechako, *YAWN*, humor that may have been fresh once but is no longer. It's from 1997 and was not my first introduction to Alaskan writing. Maybe that's why. ;-)
On a different note, I love Doogan's Nik Kane mysteries!

This book will be a humorous introduction to the culture of Alaskans. Subtitled "A Guide to Good Manners and Social Survival in Alaska" Good manners there were never written by Emily Post or Miss Manners! If you have been there, you will be ready to go back!