Shadow of the Bear
Travels in Vanishing Wilderness
کتاب های مرتبط
- اطلاعات
- نقد و بررسی
- دیدگاه کاربران
نقد و بررسی
April 24, 2006
Beginning with a dream in which he teaches a bespectacled bear to read, journalist and novelist Payton (Hail Mary Corner
) chronicles eight worldwide adventures he took to see a variety of bears in their natural habitat and understand their "political, economic, and cultural environments," delivering an extremely satisfying and sometimes provocative read. His accounts of his travels always present engrossing information on a range of topics, such as the politics of Chinese panda preservation, the squalid living conditions of the endangered Cambodian sun bear and the struggle to protect the Italian brown bear from the results of financial mismanagement at national parks. Each chapter is nicely structured and displays investigative skill; Payton's concern for environmental issues never gets in the way of his reporting. His final chapter on the American brown bears of the Colorado Plateau stylishly concludes with a moving meeting with a Navajo medicine man, who helps Payton understand that his dream and his subsequent travels are signs that he has a responsibility to tell his stories in respectful acknowledgment of the "the spirit of the bear." b&w illus.
May 15, 2006
Payton reminds us in his introduction that bears have been celebrated in art and myth since humans began drawing on the walls of caves and that perhaps more than any other animal the bear remains at the very heart of human concepts of wilderness. Payton went around the world in search of the eight remaining species of bears, traveling to India (sloth bears), China (giant pandas), Peru (spectacled bears), Cambodia (Malayan sun bears), Canada (polar bears), Italy (brown bears), France (cave bears, an extinct species), and the Colorado Plateau in the U.S. (black bears). Payton warns of the rapid rate of bear extinction--species now are disappearing 100 times faster than normal because of human activities. Payton relates interesting details about the villagers he meets and the lives they lead, panda courtship rituals, poaching, habitat destruction, remote landscapes, and much more. He gains an understanding of our relationship to these creatures and why they continue to inspire fear, fascination, and reverence. High adventure combined with dazzling passages of nature writing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)
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