As if, in midcentury Alaska, you needed more ways to die. From the creator of the critically acclaimed graphic novel My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson’s comes an unnervingly funny tale of life in Alaska during the tensest times of the Cold War. Peter Dunlap-Shohl grew up on the front lines of the Cold War in the 1950s and ’60s, where Alaska residents lived in the shadow of a nuclear arsenal nine times the size of the Soviet Union’s. This graphic novel recounts the surprising and tragicomic details of the nuclear threats faced by Alaskans, including Project Chariot, championed by Edward Teller and his “firecracker boys” in the late 1950s and early ’60s; the nearly nuclear disaster caused by the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964; and the 1971 test of a nuclear warhead on the island of Amchitka. Dunlap-Shohl shares the terrible consequences that these events and others had for humans and animals alike, all in the service of “atoms for peace.” Drawn with Dunlap-Shohl’s characteristic editorial cartooning style, Nuking Alaska is a fast-paced reminder of how close we came to total annihilation just a half century ago—and how terribly relevant the nuclear threat remains to this day.

How does one deal with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease at the age of forty-three? My Degeneration, by former Anchorage Daily News staff cartoonist Peter Dunlap-Shohl, answers the question with humor and passion, recounting the author’s attempt to come to grips with the “malicious whimsy” of this chronic, progressive, and disabling disease. This graphic novel tracks Dunlap-Shohl’s journey through depression, the worsening symptoms of the disease, the juggling of medications and their side effects, the impact on relations with family and community, and the raft of mental and physical changes wrought by the malady. My Degeneration examines the current state of Parkinson’s care, including doctor/patient relations and the repercussions of a disease that, among other things, impairs movement, can rob patients of their ability to speak or write, degrades sufferers’ ability to deal with complexity, and interferes with the sense of balance. Readers learn what it’s like to undergo a dramatic, demanding, and audacious bit of high-tech brain surgery that can mysteriously restore much of a patient’s control over symptoms. But My Degeneration is more than a Parkinson’s memoir. Dunlap-Shohl gives the person newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease the information necessary to cope with it on a day-to-day basis. He chronicles the changes that life with the disease can bring to the way one sees the world and the way one is seen by the wider community. Dunlap-Shohl imparts a realistic basis for hope—hope not only to carry on, but to enjoy a decent quality of life.