White Bear: Encounters With the Master of the Arctic Ice

by Charles T. Feazel

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.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1990

Reviews

[joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clearly, a nonfiction book published in 1990 is not going to be completely reliable in the 2020s and beyond (the Soviet Union is referred to in the present tense throughout!), and the situation for polar bears today is more grim than what the author describes at the end of the book. However, I would recommend this book today not just for the information on biology and ecology, but also for the beautiful writing. Feazel reminds us that nonfiction does not need to be boring. It's one of the most well-written nonfiction books I've come across in a while. (Although I did raise an eyebrow at the sentence, "Summer is a time of segregation in this all-white community.")

[Caro · Rating 4 out of 5]

If a wildlife book can be witty, this one is. I hope never to encounter a polar bear unless I'm inside an armored vehicle, but they are fascinating creatures. His predictions about the loss of habitat are unfortunately happening even faster today than when the book was written.