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FAIRBANKS — Alaska is big in the news right now, thanks to Sarah Palin, so schools across the country will probably be looking for books about our state to provide to students. Unfortunately, one of them will likely be a newly released volume titled “Alaska,” part of Children’s Press’ ongoing “America the Beautiful” series.

I say unfortunately for two reasons. One is that the book is plagued by a series of small but persistent errors that should have been caught before it went to press. An even bigger problem however, is that it suffers from a flaw conservative critics frequently level at today’s textbooks: It’s so overrun by political correctness and general fluff that an abundance of essential information has been left on the cutting room floor in order to make room for what, in some cases, is completely superfluous page filler.

We’ll tackle some of the errors first. On page 15 the book’s author, Tamara B. Orr, points to Alaska’s highest peak and tells readers “Although for a time it was called Mt. McKinley, in honor of president William McKinley, in 1975 it was returned to its original name, Denali, an Athabascan word meaning ‘the great one.’” Actually, it was Denali National Park that was renamed, and that happened in 1980. The mountain itself legally retains its presidential moniker, and barring an act of Congress this will remain so.

Two pages later she tells us that in the Interior, “it is not unusual for the temperatures to rise to over 90 degrees F during the summer and plummet to -80ºF in the winter.” Granted, my experience with Interior Alaska is limited — I’ve only been here most of the last 20 years — but having never experienced 80 below, I’d probably consider such a temperature unusual.

Elsewhere in the book she misstates Sarah Palin’s political career — I thought that was John McCain’s job — identifies Juneau as becoming “the state capitol” in 1900 (Alaska wasn’t even a territory at that point, much less a state) and on a governmental chart has state representatives serving four-year terms instead of two years (she does get it right in the text.) And her section on transportation basically ignores aviation, the backbone of Alaska’s transportation system.

All this can be fixed in future editions, although the fact that Children’s Press is an imprint of the highly respected Scholastic Books makes these errors harder to forgive.

What really tanks this book, however, is a relentless political correctness, coupled with an excessive pop culture focus, that causes the author to pack in as many details as possible about everyone but the people who are most notable to the state’s history.

Orr highlights several people who were prominent in Alaska’s civil rights struggles, and this is important because they are too often ignored by history. The problem is the people she does ignore: James Wickersham, the federal judge who was the most important individual in early 20th century Alaska and who went on to be a territorial representative to Congress; Ernest Gruening, the longtime territorial governor and United States senator who was crucial in the fight for statehood; and Jay Hammond, the most influential governor in modern years. None of these people, all of whom were essential to Alaska’s development, are mentioned anywhere in her history of the state.

Barely heard from is our current senator, Ted Stevens. Regardless of what you may think of him or his politics, there is no Alaskan alive today who has had more impact on this state. But apart from a brief quote on the ANWR debate, he’s missing in action.

Instead we meet the likes of Anchorage singer-songwriter and left-wing political activist Libby Roderick who warrants two entries even though most people have never heard of her, and Native American actress Irene Bedard, who left the state at age 8, never to return.

The only major figure mentioned here from Alaska’s first century under American ownership is Capt. Michael Healy, the Revenue Cutter Service captain who patrolled Alaska’s shores during the last decades of the 19th century and provided some of the earliest law enforcement in Alaska.

Healy is prominently featured here. But after reading this book, from which every important white person involved in the state’s history has been omitted, one suspects Orr only includes him because his mother was a slave. This cheapens his accomplishments. Healy’s name belongs right alongside those of Wickersham, Gruening, and Hammond. He practically governed Alaska for several years. But young readers aren’t provided any information that places his work in the context of the development of Alaska.

Plenty more gets excluded from these pages. There’s no Sheldon Jackson, no Noel Wien (and thankfully, no Christopher McCandless or Timothy Treadwell). Bob Bartlett and Ben Eielson are relegated to the briefest of mentions in an appendix buried in the back of the book. But musician Mary Youngblood gets a half-page photo and a paragraph, folk singer Jewel gets a sidebar, and several Alaskan athletes are highlighted in the text as well. And we wonder why our children neither know nor care about history.

Orr is so focused on getting every minority voice represented in this book that she forgets to cover the main themes of Alaska’s past and present. Conservatives have long complained that this kind of problem results from too much emphasis on multiculturalism in our nation’s textbooks, and here we find their grievance justified.

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh here, but because this book is intended for use in the classroom, I think the criticism is fair. “Alaska” is frequently inaccurate, sloppily edited, driven by an underlying political agenda, and worst of all, dummied down. Unless you live in Berkeley, Calif., your child’s classroom is the last place this book should be found.

David A. James lives in Fairbanks.