White Bear: Encounters With the Master of the Arctic Ice

A fascinating armchair odyssey into one of the world's most awesome and majestic landscapes--and the life of its most remarkable denizens, the polar bear--combines lore, legend, and scientific facts to provide a unique study of the arctic. Reprint.

Feazel, a geologist who has been on many Arctic expeditions, here presents a vivid portrait of one of the region's most fascinating and dangerous animals. The polar bear, the largest predator on earth, has long been a symbol of the Far North--admired, feared, worshiped and utilized by the Eskimos, Inuit and Greenlanders for millennia. The author describes with awe and admiration this magnificent animal and tells of its interactions with humans from earliest times. Polar bears deliberately kill and eat humans; accordingly, he charges his text with hair-raising accounts of man's encounters with the huge animals. More to be esteemed than dreaded, however, the polar bear, we're shown, is now threatened by man-made dangers, including global warming that would destroy the polar ice cap it inhabits. The book reveals as much about the Arctic and the advent of modern civilization as it does about the white bear. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This book is more than just a study of the polar bear's endearing as well as threatening qualities; it is an engaging commentary on the variety of life in the Arctic region. Without minimizing the polar bear's potential for spectacular violence toward its prey and, occasionally, humans, Feazel conveys a sense of this majestic animal's intelligence. He also provides detailed information not only about polar bears but about the human lives affected by the bears--the native Inuit Indians, scientific researchers, and the folks living in "the polar bear capital of the world," Churchill, Manitoba. This book has a perspective that is much broader than its title suggests. Recommended.
-Susan Klimley, Columbia Univ. Libs.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.