Mr. McGinniss was urged by friends, his curiosity and an issue of The National Geographic to spend a year in Alaska. He was told it was a "raw and wild and stimulating land…. It would … change, in some way, anyone who ventured there." But [in "Going to Extremes"] he reports more rawness than stimulation. After reading this book I feel a sledge of wild huskies couldn't drag me there. "Going to Extremes" is a serviceable title, but "Exit, Pursued by a Bear" would have described the book exactly. The bear was a grizzly sow with three cubs, and had Mr. McGinniss contemplating the topmost branches of a tree.

Mr. McGinniss does not moralize or travel with a theme in mind. Like John McPhee whose route was similar in his Alaska book, "Coming Into the Country," he takes the rough with the smooth. But he lacks Mr. McPhee's intensity...