The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964: Human Ecology.

relive in his story. Being of a different culture, Herbert Schwarz can only faithfully relate the various events and record the legends for posterity. The second part of the book is a series of biographical notes, with photographs, about the Mackenzie region storytellers Herbert Schwarz has met. The author tries to make the sketches sound conversational and personal but instead they sound selfconscious. Although these are all people whom he considers to be his friends, he seems uncomfortable when writing about them. It is unfortunate that Dr. Schwarz does not explain more fully in his notes how he came to collect these stories, nor acknowledge more fully who told him a particular story. In the biographical notes he does mention that Susie Tiktalik of Sachs Harbour told him about “The Raven and the Whale” and that “Elik, the Far Seeing One” was pieced together from fragments told to him by Kenneth Peeloolook. One wonders who told him the other stories or whether he heard several versions of each from different people, and then pieced them together to form the version in the book. When reading such a collection of tales, made in order to preserve them or present them to another culture, it would be of value for the reader to know whether or not it is a verbatim translation [or a piece that is composed of several versions of the same story]. The stories collected in Elik and other stories of the MacKenzie Eskimos are both enjoyable and indicative of the traditional Eskimo way of life. Simple line drawings by Mona Ohoveluk illustrate most vividly the principal subject of each story. For those who wish to acquaint themselves with Eskimo legends and customs this book is a valuable record and one which is well worth reading. Elizabeth Bell