In 1956, delegates gathered at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks to write a constitution for what became the forty-ninth state of the union. They produced a document that many have said was more distinctly appropriate to its time and place than any other state constitution. Victor Fischer, one of the delegates, describes this historic event. Celebrate the constitution's fiftieth anniversary and learn about the writing of this important document.

Alaska's Constitutional Convention

Fischer, Victor

University of Washington Press

"Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? No, he wasn't. It only just pisoned him for more." So Huck declares at the start of these once-celebrated but now little-known sequels to his own adventures. Tom, Huck, and Jim set sail to Africa in a futuristic air balloon, where they survive encounters with lions, robbers, and fleas and see some of the world's greatest wonders in Tom Sawyer Abroad. The boys then turn sleuth in Tom Sawyer, Detective as they attempt to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Replete with down-home, backwoods Missouri wisdom, these two stories tackle every subject from the Crusades and chronometers to ghosts and swearing popes. This authoritative edition includes all of the original illustrations Mark Twain commissioned from Dan Beard ("the only man who can correctly illustrate my writings") and A. B. Frost ("the best humorous artist that I know"). Based directly on the author's manuscripts, incorporating only his revisions and restoring many passages once suppressed by fastidious editors, the texts are presented here in the only form Twain intended them.

Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective (Mark Twain Library)

Literature & Fiction

Watson, Richard A.

TWAIN,MARK

United States

University of California Press

Mark Twain's fantastical last novel took him twelve years--and three long drafts—to complete. Based on boyhood memories of the Mississippi River Valley and of the print shops of Hannibal, the story is set in medieval Austria at the dawn of the printing craft. It is a psychic adventure, full of phantasmagoric effects, in which a penniless printer's apprentice—a youthful, mysterious stranger with the curious name 44—gradually reveals his otherworldly powers and the hidden possibilities of the mind. Ending on a startling note, this surprisingly existential novel reveals a darker side to the author's genius. This long-overlooked work appears here as Mark Twain intended it and replaces the bogus 1916 edition published by Albert Bigelow Paine, which relied on the first, instead of the final, draft, deleted one-fourth of the words, added a character, and misrepresented the ending. In addition, for the first time in the Mark Twain Library edition, a glossary of printer's terms is featured along with expert notes and commentary.

No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain Library)

Gibson, William M.

In 1956, delegates gathered at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks to write a constitution for what became the forty-ninth state of the union. They produced a document that many have said was more distinctly appropriate to its time and place than any other state constitution. Victor Fischer, one of the delegates, describes this historic event. Celebrate the constitution's fiftieth anniversary and learn about the writing of this important document.

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

University of Alaska Press

Alaska's Constitutional Convention (State Constitutional Convention Studies)

Vektordifferentiation Und Vektorintegration (German Edition)

Science & Math

Mathematics

Nabu Press

Grundbegriffe Und Grundleichungen Der Mathematischen Naturwissenschaft (English and German Edition)

History

Europe

To Russia with Love: An Alaskan's Journey

Son of the famous American journalist Louis Fischer, who corresponded from Germany and then Moscow, and the Russian writer Markoosha Fischer, Victor Fischer grew up in the shadow of Hitler and Stalin, watching his friends’ parents disappear after political arrests. Eleanor Roosevelt personally engineered the Fischer family’s escape from Russia, and soon after Victor was serving in the United States Army in World War II and fighting opposite his childhood friends in the Russian and German armies. As a young adult, he went on to help shape Alaska’s map by planning towns throughout the state. This unique autobiography recounts Fischer’s earliest days in Germany, Russia, and Alaska, where he soon entered civic affairs and was elected as a delegate to the Alaska Constitutional Convention—the body responsible for establishing statehood in the territory. A move to Washington, DC, and further government appointments allowed him to witness key historic events of his era, which he also recounts here. Finally, Fischer brings his memoir up to the present, describing how he has returned to Russia many times to bring the lessons of Alaska freedom and prosperity to the newly democratic states.

Biographies & Memoirs

Wohlforth, Charles

Historical

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Books by Fischer, Victor