Alaska Author Night – Dan O’Neill

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karrmay coined that truth in the mid-1800s for all time, including for today.

In his newly released book, “The Impertinent Question: The Words and Adventures of a Liberal Columnist at a Conservative Newspaper in the Red State of Alaska,” Fairbanks author Dan O’Neill offers some of his best columns published in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, along with other pieces published in the Anchorage Daily News and other Alaska newspapers. The News-Miner fired him in 2002. While times have indeed changed in the past quarter-century in Alaska and nationally, many of the same issues remain before us, and so speaking truth to power has not changed at all. It still gets people fired in 2025, just as it always has. (O’Neill’s previous books include “The Firecracker Boys,” the story of Project Chariot, a scheme to excavate a harbor in Northwest Arctic Alaska in the 1960s using nuclear devices.)