For more than 80 years, bush pilots have carried supplies, delivered mail, and transported emergency personnel over Alaska's rugged terrain. They've flown with felons handcuffed to the seat, with corpses strapped to the wing, and with drugged polar bears sleeping in the cargo compartment. Ever since aviation came to Alaska planes have been far more important than cars or truck to the residents of the far-flung bush communities.In Cowboys of the Sky: The Story of Alaska's Bush Pilots, humorist and historian Steven C. Levi takes you on a wild ride through the heyday of aviation in Alaska, from the golden years, before federal regulations curbed the more dangerous and outlandish flying practices, all the way to the present. Through photographs and anecdotes, you'll meet brave and colorful pilots, the true cowboys of the sky who carved the face of America's Last Frontier.

In the two decades between the Second World War and the Great Alaska Earthquake, Anchorage grew by a factor of 10. Money was, quite literally, washing down the street. The economic boom was so great that all you needed to make a million dollars was a cash register. At the same time Anchorage was one of the few cities in America where organized crime never got a firm foothold. Uptown, downtown, out of town, the locals were clever enough to keep the East Coast families out. Walrus With A Gold Tooth is a fictionalized version of crime in Anchorage over these two decades and a step-by-step history of how the local squeezed out the mob before it ever made it in. And if you know your Anchorage history, you just might be able to determine which characters are actual people whose names have been changed to protect the guilty.