Bears: A Brief History
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.14 (940 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0300143125 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-11-23 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Copyright © 2007 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker. Brunner adroitly details the ways bears have been demonized, revered, and anthropomorphized by cultures that see them in contradictory terms—both lazy and fierce, wily and dim-witted—and tells the sad stories of humanity’s attempts to domesticate and showcase these majestic, primarily reclusive beings. For instance, all bears are descended from a creature that was originally the size of a small terrier; bear shoulder blades have been used as sickles for cutting grass; Cree hunters put a lighted pipe in the mouth of their kill and blew smoke down its throat, to calm the animal&
This engaging book examines the shared history of people and bears. Interestingly, the varied dealings of humans with bears raise the same question over and again: do our images of bears have much in common with the animal as it really is? The book uncovers new and little-known stories and facts about bears in European, North American, Japanese, Russian, and South and Southeast Asian cultures. Taken together, these perspectives show us new things about the animals we thought we knew so well. Quirky and bizarre anecdotes, scientific information on bears threatened with extinction in some areas, a discussion of the phenomenon of bearanoia,” and more than one hundred historical illustrations contribute to this unique account of the shared history between bears and humans and the continuing presence of bears in our personal and collective dreams. . Hopscotching through history, literature, and science, Bernd Brunner presents a rich compendium of the int
in comparative literature from UCLA and attended the Free University of Berlin as a Fulbright Scholar.. Lori Lantz received a Ph.D. He is the author of The Ocean at Home: An Illustrated History of the Aquarium. Bernd Brunner, a graduate of the Free University of Berlin and Berlin School of Economics, is an independent scholar,
"Very Interesting Book on Bears and People" according to William Cramer. As the owner of a vast bear library, I always welcome the rare bear book that documents the historical relationship between people and bears. Along with very interesting text, this book is full of photos and illustrations that help paint the picture of our past relationship with this fascinating and wonderful animal. Mr. Brunner did his homework with this book and therefo. Brendan Kenney said Bears: who knew?. This concise cultural history of bears in human culture is in an excellent translation which I could not stop reading. Packed full of historical illustrations, this is required reading for anyone who wants to better understand his/her own relationship with bears and the place of bears in the human imagination. The potentially dry confusing classification of bears is handl. Carey Cuprisin said Lets leave the bears alone. The way we look at nature is a complicated thing -- we love it, but we also fear it and despoil it. It might be fun to read another book describing our conflicted relationship with "the world around us," but it would not be as fun as reading a book about our relationship with bears. Bears turn out to be, in all ways that are important, a more than adequate proxy for the a