Synopses & Reviews
The most comprehensive chronicle of human- grizzly bear interactions ever written.
In October 2003, the remains of Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard were spotted from the air by the pilot who came to pick them up from their campsite in remote coastal Alaska. They had been killed and eaten by the grizzlies Treadwell had observed and lived with for thirteen seasons. As recently as June 2005, two different grizzlies killed three people in Canada and Alaska. Authorities called one of these attacks “predatory.”
Neither the bear community nor the international press seemed to know what to make of these unlikely tragedies. In the twenty-first century, why should people have to tolerate this tiny yet very real element of risk? Though death by wild animal today strikes us as utterly unexpected, great beasts have prowled our campfires since the dawn of human consciousness. They were our talismans, our mentors, and our monsters. In that, they are a reminder of the ancient fear of falling prey, an awareness that has sculpted and directed the evolution of human intelligence throughout all time. The grizzly bear still presents this possibility: the power to radically alter our perception of the world around us. An encounter with our most dangerous of land mammals yet offers the quint-essential American wildlife experience.
In The Essential Grizzly, Doug and Andrea Peacock argue that the conservation of big, wild, sometimes dangerous animals is of absolute importance to modern humans, to the survival of our own species, and for rational thought. The emotional mindset behind reason is humility, a condition virtually guaranteed by a stroll through grizzly country, and a precursor to respect and tolerance for all other beings.
Together, the authors delve into the complex dynamics that characterize modern bonds between people and the great bear. They explore a wide range of human-grizzly encounters through interviews with biologists, mauling victims, hunters, and photographers who have had close contact with bears. To these they add unique portraits—sketches of real grizzlies from the viewpoint of the bear—drawn from Doug’s extensive knowledge of bear behavior, considered by many people to be the most authoritative in the world.
Filling a gap in the literature, The Essential Grizzly eclipses existing books on bear behavior, attacks, and how-to pamphlets, providing readers with a twenty-first-century context for revisiting the original shudder of Homo sapiens—the bear in the cave of our genesis—and finding a measure of familiarity and value there.
Review
In praise of
Grizzly Years:
"Peacock is a wonderful writer, a naturalist with a novelist's sensitivity and eye. I found myself holding my breath at the close encounters he relates."--Chicago Tribune
"Doug Peacock has written about his grizzly bears with a passionate and unguarded heart. Grizzly Years is ultimately a love story about a man who returns from war shorn of his soul, and recovers his soul through his efforts to study and protect the grandest predator on earth, Ursus horribilis. I cannot imagine that a more worthwhile book will be printed this year."--Jim Harrison
"Grizzly Years is an exciting natural history and, more important, a striking metaphor in its impassioned outcry against senseless waste of life on earth--human life included. "--Peter Matthiessen
"Grizzly Years belongs to a genre of literature written for the soul. Doug Peacock writes with great heart, eloquence, and verge. He calls for a revolution of the spirit through an immersion in the natural world. I believe him, he is trustworthy. This book does not lie."--Terry Tempest Williams
"It's been a long time since I've enjoyed a book so much. It is the saga of one man's spiritual rebirth through contact with wild nature and the primitive American landscape. Like Peter Matthiessen, Peacock writes about the natural world with a novelist's eye and sensibility."--Philip Caputo
Review
"This is the finest kind of writing about the natural world, where the authors are able to shed their own egos and build a deeply moving, deeply real account of what our world must feel like to its wildest inhabitants. The grizzly is essential, and so is this book." --Bill McKibben, author of
Deep Economy: A Slightly More Hopeful Version of What Comes Next "In this riveting work, the Peacocks convincingly show how Americas greatest carnivore connects Americans to their culture, their history, their humanity, and the values we most treasure." --Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. "No one has ever explored so deeply and so beautifully the heart and soul of the matterthe intricate life force of our own species' complicated and in many ways tragic relationship with this grand predator. Peacock and his wife Andrea have written the definitive book on the subject. I wish everyone in America, and especially our so-called 'leaders,' would read this wonderful book." --Jim Fergus, author of One Thousand White Women and The Wild Girl
"Doug Peacock has taught me a lot about how to deal with the wily griz be humble, talk to him respectfully, and dont sing country western. The Peacocks new book is an essential read for anyone who wants to get into the mind of these alpha predators."--Yvon Chouinard, owner of Patagonia Inc. "This is a book about total immersion and full participation in life, about open-mindedness and openheartedness, but don't read it unless you are hospitable to the notion that large, fierce animals should live free in the wilderness nearest you, even if they eat your cat." --Michael Soulé, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz A wonderful compilation of grizzly myth and lore, modern field biology and conservation, ecopolitics and ethics, interview and personal insightall of it firmly grounded in experience in the field and an unsentimental love for this awesome animal. Indispensable.” Peter Matthiessen, author of The Snow Leopard "Like Peter Matthiessen, Peacock writes about the natural world with a novelist's eye and sensibility." --Philip Caputo "Doug Peacock has written about his grizzly bears with a passionate and unguarded heart." --Jim Harrison "The book is a clear-eyed, non-romanticized look at these amazing animals, their lives and the realities of bear-human interactions." --The Arizona Republic
..an impassioned exploration of how the great bear prowls the landscape of the contemporary mind..”-- Outside Magazine a welcome addition to an already extensive literature about bears.
a clear-eyed, non-romanticized look at these amazing animals
”-- Arizona Republic
"Our list of Cool Stuff”-- Backpacker Magazine
Synopsis
Winner of Foreword Magazine's 2006 Gold Award for Nature Book of the Year! In
The Essential Grizzly, Doug and Andrea Peacock argue that the conservation of big, wild, sometimes dangerous animals is of absolute importance to modern humans, to the survival of our own species, and for rational thought. The emotional mindset behind reason is humility, a condition virtually guaranteed by a stroll through grizzly country, and a precursor to respect and tolerance for all other beings.
Together, the authors delve into the complex dynamics that characterize modern bonds between people and the great bear. They explore a wide range of human-grizzly encounters through interviews with biologists, mauling victims, hunters, and photographers who have had close contact with bears. To these they add unique portraitssketches of real grizzlies from the viewpoint of the beardrawn from Dougs extensive knowledge of bear behavior, considered by many people to be the most authoritative in the world.
Filling a gap in the literature, The Essential Grizzly eclipses existing books on bear behavior, attacks, and how-to pamphlets, providing readers with a twenty-first-century context for revisiting the original shudder of Homo sapiensthe bear in the cave of our genesisand finding a measure of familiarity and value there.
Synopsis
In May 2003, naturalist Charlie Russell, known for his close-up work with black and grizzly bears in British Columbia, returned to the site of his research with brown bears in Kamchatka to find his subjects missing and the gall bladder of a bear cub nailed to his cabin door. Upon further investigation, Russell and his partner concluded that between twenty and forty of the bears they'd been working with had been killed by organized poachers. Five months later, Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard were spotted from the air by the pilot who'd come to pick them up from their campsite in remote coastal Alaska. They had been killed and eaten by the grizzlies Timothy had observed and lived with for thirteen years.
Neither the bear community nor the international press knew what to make of these tragedies. Why the seemingly needless deaths of both men and bears? Especially disturbing were the deaths of Treadwell and Huguenard. Though death by wild beast today strikes us as utterly unexpected, humans have experienced this extreme form of animal interaction throughout the millennia of their evolution.
Men and Bears explores these kinds of encounters, beginning with interviews--of biologists, mauling victims, hunters, native people, photographers--all kinds of people who have had close contact with grizzly bears. Doug and Andrea Peacock then wrap these human narratives in the universe of the bear, with the benefit of modern and traditional knowledge of bear behavior. To these they add unique portraits, sketches of real grizzlies from the viewpoint of the bear, along with the parallel human story of an actual encounter. Last, they provide the context of Doug's extensive experience in grizzly country, considered by many people to be the most authoritative in the world.
The urban dweller's craving for these timeless, sometimes horrific, stories reveals an aching desire to understand our own place in the world and in the landscapes of human evolution--a wildness now vanishing before our eyes. Filling a gap in the literature, Men and Bears eclipses existing books on bear behavior, attacks, and how-to pamphlets, providing readers with a twenty-first-century context for revisiting the original shudder of Homo sapiens--the bear or the lion in the cave of our genesis--and finding a measure of familiarity and value there.
Synopsis
The most comprehensive and assiduous chronicle of human-grizzly bear interactions ever written.
About the Author
DOUG PEACOCK is a renowned grizzly bear expert and nature writer. A Vietnam vet and former Green Beret medic, his memoirs,
The Grizzly Years and
Walking It Off, chronicle the healing of his war-torn soul through his relationship with this quintessential carnivore. He is also the author of
Baja and served as the "wild grizzly consultant" for the classic 1988 Jean-Jacques Annaud film,
The Bear. Doug also writes extensively for magazines, including
Audubon, Backpacker, and
Outside.
ANDREA PEACOCK is the author of the critically acclaimed Libby, Montana: Asbestos and the Deadly Silence of the American Corporation. Her articles have also appeared in Mother Jones and High Country News. She is the former editor of the Missoula Independent. Andrea and Doug live in Livingston, Montana.