Sarah Palin a hockey mom and small town mayor, thought her dream of making a difference in the male-dominated realm of Alaska politics was over when she clashed with the state chairman of her Republican Party and went head to head with the powerful Republican governor. In 2006, she became a long-shot candidate for governor demanding a higher ethical standard in state government. Then, fate intervened. Her populist reform message suddenly became frontpage...

In 1969, Natalie Kusz and her family abandoned the city, packed up the car, and headed to Alaska. They ended up a hundred miles from Fairbanks in a dilapidated house surrounded by 258 acres of spruce, birch, and willow, and no road. When the first winter came, with Mr. Kusz working in Prudhoe Bay, money running out, and temperatures 60 below, the Kusz family was living so close to disaster that the question was not when it would strike but whom.

The spellbinding story of Chris McCandless, who gave away his savings, hitchhiked to Alaska, walked into the wilderness alone, and starved to death in 1992, fascinated not just New York Times bestselling author Jon Krakauer, but also the rest of the nation. Krakauer's book,Into the Wild, became an international bestseller, translated into thirty-one languages, and Sean Penn's inspirational film by the same name further skyrocketed Chris McCandless...