Synopses & Reviews
Over a continent and three centuries, American livestock owners destroyed wolves to protect the beasts that supplied them with food, clothing, mobility, and wealth. The brutality of the campaign soon exceeded wolves' misdeeds. Wolves menaced property, not people, but storytellers often depicted the animals as ravenous threats to human safety. Subjects of nightmares and legends, wolves fell prey not only to Americans' thirst for land and resources but also to their deeper anxieties about the untamed frontier. Now Americans study and protect wolves and jail hunters who shoot them without authorization. Wolves have become the poster beasts of the great American wilderness, and the federal government has paid millions of dollars to reintroduce them to scenic habitats like Yellowstone National Park. Why did Americans hate wolves for centuries? And, given the ferocity of this loathing, why are Americans now so protective of the animals?
In this ambitious history of wolves in America and of the humans who have hated and then loved them Jon Coleman investigates a fraught relationship between two species and uncovers striking similarities, deadly differences, and, all too frequently, tragic mis-understanding.
Review
"This is a bold, smart, and original book, written with verve and imagination. Far more than a history of wolves in America, it is a meditation on the meanings of time, history, and culture, and an inquiry into the nature of cruelty and hatred." Andrew Cayton, Distinguished Professor of History, Miami University
Review
"A fascinating book which draws on historical, biological and cultural insights in a penetrating analysis of how Americans have interacted with a major predator. Colemans approach allows us to understand fully why we eliminated wolves from the United States, and why recent debates over wolf reintroduction have been so heated." Robert Keiter, author of Keeping Faith with Nature and The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Review
"A fabulous book. Coleman is a witty, incisive writer who has unearthed a new history for Americans hate-love relationship with wolves. This is a work of exceptional ambition at the cutting edge of environmental history." Louis Warren, author of Hunters Game, and W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History, Univ. of California, Davis
Review
"This is a remarkably well-written, provocative and insightful work of history on a timely and important topic." Alan Taylor, University of California at Davis
Review
"This is a sick-making book....[It] seeks to fathom the 300-year history of limitless sadism that attended wolves' extermination.....The terrible truth (obvious in the photographs of the broken and mutilated victims in this book), the only explanation for the history Coleman records, is that given half a chance, too many men will behave viciously." Benjamin Schwarz, the Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Alantic Monthly review)
Synopsis
Why did Americans hate wolves for centuries? And, given the ferocity of this loathing, why are Americans now so protective of the animals? In this provocative history of wolves in Americaand#151;and of the humans who have hated and loved themand#151;Jon Coleman investigates the sometimes violent and always controversial relationship between the two species.
"With lively prose and copious detail (Coleman) deftly weaves together the histories of settler and lupine societies. . . . Provocative, scholarly, scholarly, and readable."and#151;Karen R. Jones, Journal of American History
"Thoughtfully conceived, insightful, and well written, Vicious is a wicked good read."and#151;Andrew Kirk, Montana: The Magazine of Western History
About the Author
Jon T. Coleman teaches history at the University of Notre Dame.