A Best Book of the Year in The New Yorker, Economist, and Science News

A Scientific American Best Staff Read

Shortlisted for the Banff Centre Mountain Book Awards

"Vivid and engrossing... [A] celebration of beardom." -- Richard Adams Carey, Wall Street Journal

A global exploration of the eight remaining species of bears -- and the dangers they face.

Bears have always held a central place in our collective memory, from Indigenous folklore and Greek mythology to nineteenth-century fairytales and the modern toy shop. But as humans and bears come into ever-closer contact, our relationship nears a tipping point. Today, most of the eight remaining bear species are threatened with extinction. Some, such as the panda bear and the polar bear, are icons of the natural world; others, such as the spectacled bear and the sloth bear, are far less known.

In Eight Bears, journalist Gloria Dickie embarks on a globe-trotting journey to explore each bear's story, whisking readers from the cloud forests of the Andes to the ice floes of the Arctic; from the jungles of India to the backwoods of the Rocky Mountain West. She meets with key figures on the frontlines of modern conservation efforts -- the head of a rescue center for sun and moon bears freed from bile farms, a biologist known as Papa Panda, who has led China's panda-breeding efforts for almost four decades, a conservationist retraining a military radar system to detect and track polar bears near towns -- to reveal the unparalleled challenges bears face as they contend with a rapidly changing climate and encroaching human populations.

Weaving together ecology, history, mythology, and a captivating account of her travels and observations, Dickie offers a closer look at our volatile relationship with these magnificent mammals. Engrossing and deeply reported, Eight Bears delivers a clear warning for what we risk losing if we don't learn to live alongside the animals that have shaped our cultures, geographies, and stories.

• We started tracking this book on July 16, 2023.
• This book was $14.99 when we started tracking it.
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• Politics & Social SciencesSocial SciencesAnthropologyCultural
• Science & MathBiological SciencesAnimalsWildlife
• Science & MathEnvironmentConservation

• Publication Date: July 11, 2023
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 246 Pages
• File Size: 82 KB