Open Thread – Crude Awakening Book Salon TODAY!
Join me and author Amanda Coyne of Alaska Dispatch today at firedoglake.com for a book salon featuring the new release Crude Awakening – Money, Mavericks and Mayhem in Alaska by Coyne and co-author Tony Hopfinger. Details below. Hope to see you there!
[Cross-posted from Alaska Dispatch]
Jeanne Devon, AKA AK Muckraker, who runs the popular Alaska-based website The Mudflats, is hosting an online discussion Sunday, Nov. 13, of “Crude Awakening: Money, Mavericks and Mayhem in Alaska.” The discussion will be held at Firedoglake Book Salon. “Crude Awakening” was penned by Alaska Dispatch founders Amanda Coyne and Tony Hopfinger. Coyne will answer questions from 1-3 p.m. Alaska Time (5-7 p.m. Eastern Time, 2-4 p.m Pacific).
Here’s the book jacket description (though Devon’s description, which will appear tomorrow on Firedoglake, is better than what the authors came up with):
Crude Awakening is the rollicking story of politics in America’s last frontier and oil province—Alaska, the nation’s most wild and mysterious state, where politics and oil blurred on the day wildcatters struck it big in 1968. Living in a northern Never Land, where oil companies and the federal government kept the state living high and wild, a handful of players ran the show. Among them were the late Sen. Ted Stevens and oilman Bill Allen, the Tony Soprano of Alaska who controlled the political machine until the FBI arrived to root out corruption, only to be accused of playing as dirty as those they were investigating. These characters and events paved the way for Sarah Palin’s rise to fame and fall from glory in Alaska. Authors Amanda Coyne and Tony Hopfinger chart the epic tale of these three characters, set in a state of soaring hopes, fading dreams, drying oil fields and an uncertain future.
The authors will also be on Alaska Public Radio’s Alaska New Nightly at 6 p.m. on Monday, APRN’s talk of Alaska at 10 a.m. Tuesday, and Moore Up North on Thursday, Nov. 17 at 5:30 p.m. at the Taproot Cafe in Anchorage. The authors will be reading and signing books on Nov. 19 at 11:30 a.m. at Fireside Books in Palmer.
Reviews of the book can be found here, here and here.
I really enjoyed reading the questions and comments at the Salon.
WANT to get the book!
Thanks AKM for the link to the salon.
And thanks to FDL for the forum it provides in doing the salons.
Yay! I don’t know what rock I was under but just recently heard about Amanda & Tony’s book. This is damm fine news! So is something else I’m reading between the lines…I’m very pleased about that.
The Alaska Dispatch and Juneau Empire are the only media in Alaska I read regularly. The ADN can go pound sand for all I care. They handled the Palin thing so badly (fully intentionally) that I will never support them in any way, on any day.
Here’s one way a small-year-round-population upstate town dealt with losing their department store:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/business/a-town-in-new-york-creates-its-own-department-store.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me
They made one for themselves!
AKM-I have a question for you about the Mudflats. I went looking for numbers on how well Palin’s biopic is selling. There was a listing on the second page that claimed to be Mudflats and I wanted to see what you had to say. My security warned me about malicious stuff and said site was involved in fraud. Can someone be using your site for evil?
You should be able to tell this readily by the url that appears when you mouse over the link to that site, if it is not identical to the mudflats URL (and it can’t be) then you know instantly that it is bogus.
The domain name resolution of the bogus URL may not tell you wanything, but it will give you an IP address and you can do various reverse lookups on IPs that will tell you things about where they are and who owns them.
I must say it is a little strange that you did not provide any examples of the links you claim to have followed. Even if you did not notice a simple difference in them from legitimate mudflats links, one would think that it would be useful to be able to follow where you went. As it is we have nothing but your claim that this place exists and the odd question you posed.
There was a listing on the second page of what? A google search? Or were you looking at some other proprietary website?You say yourself the site you viewed “claimed” to be mudflats, why did you not verify whether or not it was yourself?
Was the web site you visited even the same top level domain. Mudflats is a NET domain. Mudflats with any other top level domain is a different deal.
Please show us the URLs you went to. And where you found them.
KN-I typed in “the Undefeated by sarah palin dvd sales” and that sent me to the sight I mentioned. You are talking way over my head when it comes to reverse lookups,etc. That is why I asked the question. If I knew all that technical stuff,I would have done the investigation myself.
themudflats.net/…/palins-movie-the-undefeated-heads-for-dvd/
Jul 27, 2011 – In the Sarah Palin documentary, “The Undefeated,” this is the entry on the page I guess is from google.
Atlantic Wire reports traces of 2-Butoxyethanol or 2-BE have been discovered in drinking water wells around Pavillion,Wyoming. 2-BE is widely used as a chemical in hydraulic fracturing which has been going on in Wyoming since Cheney was veep.. Also found was Benzene in levels 50 times higher than allowed for consumption,along with different phenols. Wyoming residents have complained for ten years about drinking water that turns black and smells like diesel fuel. The well water is saturated with methane gas consistent with deep drilling ops. AW also reports that columnist George Wil’s wife,Mari Maseng is working for Rick Perry’s campaign. She was reported to have worked with Michele One L and sought employment from Romney’s campaign as an advisor. George Will hadn’t gotten around to tell of his wife’s connections,yet.
Maybe George thinks we won’t notice, or make the connection with his odd views of the candidates. It did seem to take the public a while to catch on to Justice Thomas and his radical wife, Ginny.
Wish I could be there, but my magic carpet’s in the shop.
This should be interesting. Thanks for hosting.