Gold miners who set out seeking fortune in the Alaskan Yukon in the final years of the 19th century lived in a network of production and consumption that constantly shifted between preindustrial forms of subsistence to wider nonlocal industrial economies, significantly shifting their relationship to nature. This relationship, suggests Morse (history, Middlebury College), could be transformed, but never escaped. She explores these relationships and the meanings ascribed to them by miners and others affected by the impact of the Gold Rush. The transportation of food and miners, the culture of travel, and political representations of nature, are discussions given as much weight as the culture of the miners themselves. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)