Eight Bears
Gloria Dickie
W.W. Norton & Co., $30
The Yakut people of eastern Siberia call brown bears “grandfather” and “uncle.” Shepherds in the French Pyrenees call the brown bear la va-nu-pieds, the “barefooted one,” a reference to its humanlike footprints. In Peru, the Ukuku is an Andes-traipsing man-bear hybrid in Quechua lore that steals away young women.
The ancient and recurrent history of humans recognizing bears as either spiritual or biological brethren sets the tone for the book, which provides rich lessons for understanding our ursine neighbors and how their lives have intertwined with our own.
That bears have had such a cultural grip on our species is impressive given their dearth of global diversity. As you might have guessed, there are only eight bear species: brown, black, sun, moon, polar, spectacled, sloth and giant panda. Dickie explores each in vivid detail, traveling across three continents to some of the places where they amble.
2023-07-13 07:00:00
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