Never Look a Polar Bear in the Eye: A Family Field Trip to the Arctic's Edge in Search of Adventure, Truth, and Mini-Marshmallows

by Zac Unger

"I like to go out for walks, but it's a little awkward to push the baby stroller and carry a shotgun at the same time."--housewife from Churchill, Manitoba Yes, welcome to Churchill, Manitoba. Year-round human population: 943. Yet despite the isolation and the searing cold here at the arctic's edge, visitors from around the globe flock to the town every fall, driven by a single purpose: to see polar bears in the wild.

Churchill is "The Polar Bear Capital of the World," and for one unforgettable "bear season," Zac Unger, his wife, and his three children moved from Oakland, California, to make it their temporary home. But they soon discovered that it's really the polar bears who are at home in Churchill, roaming past the coffee shop on the main drag, peering into garbage cans, languorously scratching their backs against fence posts and front doorways. Where kids in other towns receive admonitions about talking to strangers, Churchill schoolchildren get "Let's All Be Bear Aware" booklets to bring home. (Lesson number 8: Never explore bad-smelling areas.)

Zac Unger takes readers on a spirited and often wildly funny journey to a place as unique as it is remote, a place where natives, tourists, scientists, conservationists, and the most ferocious predators on the planet converge. In the process he becomes embroiled in the controversy surrounding "polar bear science"--and finds out that some of what we've been led to believe about the bears' imminent extinction may not be quite the case. But mostly what he learns is about human behavior in extreme situations . . . and also why you should never even think of looking a polar bear in the eye.

Genres: Nonfiction, Animals, Memoir, Travel, Environment, Adventure, Canada

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting memoir to me because it dealt with two overlapping interests of mine: polar bears and the town of Churchill, Manitoba. Churchill is located on the shore of Hudson's Bay, the most southerly spot where one can “easily” go to see these giant predators. I use the quotes because it is not as easy as you think to get to this tundra town. You either fly on one of the limited number of flights or take a long, long train trip.

I went in 2014 on a one day trip, flying out of Calgary really early one Saturday morning, returning on the same plane and getting home after 10 p.m. School buses met us at the airport and trundled us out to the tourist facility where we were quickly herded onto tundra buggies. (Unger was right, the ramps to get into the buggies are reminiscent of cattle chutes.) The bliss of watching big white bears ensued.

I really enjoyed the history of the Churchill area and the town that Unger summarized here. On my trip, we never made it into town, so I got to see it through his eyes. When I was in high school, I had the thought that I'd like to spend time living in the north and now I'm kind of relieved that I never got to do that.

Unger himself wasn't really a guy that I'd want to have a coffee with. He comes across as pretty rigid and judgy. Maybe because I've been one of the tourists that he despises, I found his condescension hard to take. I can appreciate his grumpiness about the politics of polar bear research--it's complicated and it's not advisable to get too black and white in your thinking. You have to be able to multitask and believe several impossible things before breakfast. He seems very invested in right and wrong, picking sides, when I felt that an open mind would have served him much better.

I also hope that he spent more time than it sounded like with his wife and children during their couple of months sojourn in Churchill. His wife must truly love him to put up with his hare-brained schemes. Living in an unfurnished suite with three children, minimal possessions, and the limitations of northern living would be a strain on any relationship. It seemed like he got to do all the cool stuff that cost money and the family had to linger in the unfurnished suite, avoiding bears.

Despite Unger's disdain for people like me, I am seriously considering returning to the tundra as a tourist. No matter what he says, seeing polar bears is an awesome experience.

[Melissa (Semi Hiatus Until After the Holidays) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is ok, but it definitely has an agenda rather than "search for the truth". It has some good points and is occasionally interesting, but overall it is a slog to get through and wanders around in circles a lot.


I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book, all opinions are my own.

[Thia · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you like polar bears, this book is difficult to read. The whole things has the very bitter tone of a guy who studied environmentalism and wanted to save the world, but instead...didn’t. Each chapter of the books features the author’s harsh judgments of complete strangers that are clearly deflective. He often pities the folly of tourist, guides, and others who are literally doing exactly what he is.

He practically mocks a teenage girl who is having a once in a lifetime experience and describes how he always acts better than all the lowly tourists, but complains constantly how he didn’t have a good time. He criticizes the “heavy hitters” for using the polar bears for personal gain yet he presents a “controversy” at the beginning of the book which he kind of touches back on every know and then, which is very weak but he was clearly just looking for a selling point, or an angle, since most of the book is his misadventures with sad Rupert and annoying Steve.

I hope some of his subjects didn’t read about themselves, and if you went to Churchill yourself, I wouldn’t recommend this book. Unless you want to know one man’s opinion on why bringing cameras on vacation is stupid, then this book will probably make you roll your eyes more than it offers any real insight. He just adds a lot of details about people that are clearly meant to be humorous but just make him sound like an intolerable jerk. Maybe it was he who was Steve all along.

I mean, his whole thesis is that maybe bears aren’t dying and that bums him out cause he was kind of banking on them dying. But not in the same way that those morbidly obese sheep of tourists were, no he’s way more evolved than those wanna be bear whisperers despite the fact that he keeps wanting to feel a bears breath on his neck.

Its really not even clear what the authors feelings about polar bears are at all, except that his passages about seeing them really suggests that he thinks they’re overrated. If you are a climate change denier, unfortunately, this book might be for you! He doesn’t trust the scientist that have dedicated their lives to polar bears, but is heavily swayed by the varying and contradictory eye witness accounts of Churchill locals. If you love polars bears and dream of going to Churchill and seeing them first hand or you already have, then spare yourself the insults. I am not even someone who would ever find that kind of vacation enjoyable, either, but I was still like “okay, man, give them a break. You’re not that funny”.

If you think this review is harsh, just wait to you read Unger’s reviews...of everyone he meets. A more appropriate subtitle of the book would be “cheap shots on everyone having a better time than me”.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a scientist, this book peaked my interest, because there are often other sides to a story or other evidence that some accept and others consider when it is useful. This book kept me interested with the initial visit to Churchill to hear the side of the polar bear story from a scientist who noticed clear discrepancies between what was reported by the big shots and what was observed in the field. However, after that, the book was no longer was an interesting read. It was a curious experiment bringing his family to the frozen north, but any of the polar bear experiences became chores to get through.

Pros: Easy read; vivid descriptions of Churchill and its history; good introduction to take and do own research on polar bears

Cons: Directionless; We do not want to go through the tour that you did not want to go on either...

[sylas · Rating 1 out of 5]

April 2013 - Well, I made it halfway through this stewing pile of crap. Right wing propaganda attempting (and failing) to disguise itself as... not that. This author is a pain in the ass with a totally self-centered (and, frankly unrealistic) world view. I came for the engaging descriptions of polar bears living their lives and left when I could no longer trudge through the author's bullshit. My suggestion: don't bother.

March, 2013 - This is total right wing propaganda, but after watching the link below I felt strangely drawn to checking this book out. It's already very annoying and offensive, but still somehow compelling. We'll see how long I last.

http://mediamatters.org/embed/static/...

[Cindy Knoke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and read it while in Churchill.
The author is funny, smart, a great writer, and the book is utterly engaging and non-put-down-able. He is also merciless in his without-anaesthesia dissections of other human beings he meets and their fatal flaws.
I would never want to actually talk to him because of this externalized criticism.
But, it is a great book.

[Eshonstrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review originally appeared on my blog, www.wildtracts.blogspot.com

Two recent books are rewriting how we view the environment, particularly in our post Deep Horizon world; Visit Sunny Chernobyl and Never Look A Polar Bear in the Eye.

Andrew Blackwell’s hilarious and deeply thoughtful new book, Visit Sunny Chernobyl, is a harbinger of things to come within the genres of travel books and environmental writing. The old guards of activist green screeds – Bill McKibbon, Rachel Carson, and even Michael Pollan – write from the panic room. Their books represent a collective neurosis about just how badly we’ve (read here: western culture) fucked up our planet. They write in earnest, serious tones about the destruction of the ozone, of the ebbing redoubtable qualities of egg shells, of local organic vegetables. They come across with the same sort of naiveté and idealism that characterized the 60’s. I like all their books.

But Blackwell’s book does something a bit different. Blackwell visits seven of the world’s most polluted places. The difference is that he does so as a tourist, arguing that true ‘eco-travel’ should include visits to places that represent massive environmental destruction – that truly responsible travel for the enviro-generation should stare directly into the face of all the crap we’ve caused due to our insatiable appetite for Sbarro subs, Flaming Hot Cheetos, Scandinavian hardwood furniture at reasonable prices, and iPhones.


The difference lies in Blackwell’s irony and sarcasm. He visits these places not to mourn the tragedy of their existence, but also to look at the hypocrisy of the environmental movement. Perhaps his finest quality as a writer – besides being funny – is his ability to cheer the cities and places in the world that don’t make it into the Lonely Planet guidebooks:

"I had lived in New Delhi for six months and happened to visit Kanpur, where the Ganga received a crippling infusion of industrial effluent and municipal sewage. It was supposedly the most polluted city in India. But I liked visiting Kanpur. I liked how you could walk from the tanneries to the river, from the open sewers to the farms, and see for yourself how they were all connected. I like how you could stand on the banks of the reeking Ganga, almost as sludgy as it was holy, and watch the pilgrims take their holy baths, confident in the purifying power of the impure water. All this, and cheap hotels. Yet in the guidebooks, Kanpur didn’t exist.

Well, that’s not fair, I’d thought."

But Blackwell isn’t just making fun of shitty rivers and banal travel guides – he’s looking at the ‘environmental movement’ and assessing where the hypocrisy may lie:

"And in Delhi, I had met a different species of environmentalism from that in the United States. Back home, however much you thought you cared about the environment, it was an impersonal concern. After all, your daily surroundings, whether in suburb or city, were likely to be pleasant, or at least clean, or at least nontoxic. In India, though, environmentalism was more than an abstract moral value. It was more than a way to signal your politics and your socioeconomic status. Here, in the daily confrontation with poor air and adulterated drinking water, it took on the urgency of a civil rights struggle. Only in the polluted places could you properly understand what was at stake."



Blackwell is by no means the only author taking this tack. Zac Unger’s new book, Never Look a Polar Bear in the Eye, is a similar investigation of the hypocrisies in the ‘save the polar bear movement,’ which has as an epicenter the Canadian town of Churchill on the Hudson Bay. Churchill is famous for the fact that it stands directly in the path of about 1,000 polar bears who travel down the streets of the town every November to get out onto the ice of Hudson Bay and eat seals.

Unger is hilarious. Not only that, I love his writing because rather than following the traditional lone-wolf travel writer archetype of heading off into the wilds and pondering existence, he brings his wife and three kids to Churchill with him. As someone with a family, this was my favorite part of the book. While investigating whether climate change was really killing bears or not; trying to find out where all the money thrown at the polar bears was going; and while trying to wrap his head around Patagonia-clad tourists who burn tens of thousands of gallons of auto and jet fuel to head up into the arctic to view the polar bears “before they’re gone;” Unger is also pushing his two year old down the street in a stroller during an arctic white-out, cleaning up after his five year old after the kid barfs into his sleeping bag (twice in the same night – been there), and trying to match his wife’s sunny optimism about living for months in an unfurnished apartment.

Unger’s unique take on green tourism cracked me up every time. On riding in a ‘tundra buggy lodge;’ a $10,000 experience that takes tourists out into the tundra in what amounts to a big RV on tractor tires, Unger writes:

"The attraction is that instead of riding in the buggies, the bears come to you so that you can bask in their nearness while you sip your morning coffee or clip your toenails before bed. Extreme isolation, punishing weather, and wild animals known primarily for their malicious temperaments: it’s like The Shining meets Jaws, but with a really touchy septic system thrown in for extra horror value."

What these books have in common is their ironic take on simplistic views of environmentalism. They also deal expressly with the complexity of environmental issues, and how a nuanced, contextualized approach to any environmental or conservation issue is needed. Also, how NGO’s and environmental groups need money too, and often drive their campaigns in ways that aren’t necessarily dishonest, but have as much marketing muscle as Bud Light Lime.

Reading through these two books and others like them – for instance Moby Duck by Donovan Hohn, where the author chases down trash on beaches from a sunken container ship containing toys from China – I’ve come to realize that we are entering into a new era of travel and environmental writing. Carson and McKibbon wrote with dire urgency about coming environmental tsunamis. They were designed to engage the readers in change, and both McKibbon and Carson could safely be described as activists, warning us that if we don’t change our materialistic ways, we’re all genuinely fucked.

For Blackwell and Unger, the apocalypse has already arrived. And in the face of the end of the world, the best weapon to have is probably sense of humor.

Erik Shonstrom
www.wildtracts.blogspot.com

[Doris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doesn’t everyone love polar bears? Such an interesting story. Makes me want to learn more about these bears. Zac does a great job sharing his story. I am also left realizing that I need to do more research to better understand global warming. No one should accept only what the media tells us. Actually this additional research applies to a lot of things. Food for thought.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a tangle for me, and despite its important and timely insights, the haughty, sarcastic tone and disdain turned me off and made the book difficult to finish.

Unger comes across, despite occasional attempts at self-effacement, as above everything that is going on around him during his sojourn in the north. From the tourist industry of Churchill, the tourists themselves, the scientists working in the arctic, and the locals eking out their living in and around the bears, hardly anyone got away without scathing judgement. Some judgement is warranted, based on what I know from outside the covers of this book, but the tone left me with a bad taste and made me mistrust the author's voice instead of take his side as he observed the absurdities around him. Although the observations and insights into the complicated issue of polar bear research (and environmental tourism) and how it plays into the ongoing climate change conversation were timely and reflected the true complexity of an issue often reported as black and white - and were well worth the effort - I found it hard to keep coming back to finish his telling of this particular narrative.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's always good to read something that challenges your assumptions, that injects a healthy skepticism (if we may even use that word any more, when it comes to questions of global climate). And Unger would be the first to admit that he's not the best arbiter of the scientific evidence on polar bear populations ("I was in no position to referee this professor-level spat" [p. 278]). The data are messy, and perhaps inconsistent, and Unger reflects this when he begins an otherwise chipper book with anecdotal accounts of polar bear cannibalism.

Unger wisely withholds his tale of riding one of Churchill, Manitoba's tundra buggies until the last third of the narrative. Ecotourism sometimes shows an undesirable side, and it's good that he deglamorizes Churchill ("If Churchill had a flag it would be gray on a gray background, with gray trim." [p. 22]).

But his condescending cheap shots at train aficionados (p. 100), geologists (p. 109), birders, and chubby tourists (p. 228) coarsen the work. No references, no notes, no index.

[Jessica Fellows · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read about someone’s fascination with polar bears. The author attempts to study polar bears and discovers the tight world of experts or heavy hitters he calls them that attempt to keep the truth tightly to the best. Some of the experts screen polar bears will be extinct by 2050 but when you visit Churchill as the author does evidence may actually be tilting in other directions. What held my breath was if the author would keep his promise and get his 4 year old son to see a real life polar in person.

[Thalarctos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this examination of the polar bear related tourism industry. I have entertained the idea of going up there myself, but now I think this book has saved me thousands of dollars. I got to experience what it was like stuffed into a tundra buggy with many other people without having to actually suffer.

The writing was entertaining, I laughed out loud a few times. If you've thought about going to Churchhill to see the bears, you owe it to yourself to read this first.

[Sarah Ewald · Rating 5 out of 5]

An entertaining and informative book about 'polar bear' tourism in Canada, and a look at how scientists study polar bear activity and how scientists spar with each other regarding either the bear's demise or population rebounding.
What is brought to the fore in this book is the absolute remoteness of the area and the harsh conditions in winter...

"If you think of Canada as nothing but frozen tundra and windswept grasslands, then you obviously haven't experienced Manitoba. Manitoba is the ooziest place I have ever been. Manitobans boast that their province is home to 100,000 lakes, but that understates how watery everything is. Depending on your criteria for the use of the word 'lake', Manitoba could easily have a million of them. Spidery networks of creeks and rivers stretch out in every direction, linking pond to rivulet to brook to any other word ever invented to describe a body of water. Even solid ground looks unstable; I suspect that anything in Manitoba that isn't paved over could be drunk through a straw.

Manitoba's most prominent natural feature is Lake Winnipeg, a long, ragged fissure in the earth just north of the city of Winnipeg. It has a shallow bottom, and irregular coastline, and dozens of tiny islands...
Although Lake Winnipeg is not large enough to be affected by lunar tides, the wind whips up waves as high as four feet, and water levels are so variable that you can bring a towel and picnic to your favorite beach spot only to find a long pier leading out to a mile of pure mud. Which may be for the best, because Lake Winnipeg is subject to regular explosions of blue-green algae called neurotoxic cyanophyte, which, if inhaled, can cause vomiting, diarrhea, liver and brain damage, and sometimes death. Nothing puts a damper on a summer vacation quite like liver failure."

Yet this is where the author brings his family for a month's long visit to the area to learn more about the culture of tourism that has sprouted from the polar bear.

"Unlike some small towns that gradually peter out into the wilderness, a farmhouse there, a woodsman's shed over there, Churchill just ends. On the western edge of town sits the Iceberg Tavern; behind it there's a steel-mesh garbage cage, rusted by the salt air and battered by the bears. And beyond that...there's nothing. If you were to stand on the roof of the bar and throw a rock, it would land in bear country. There's a signpost planted in the ground, with a picture of a bear and an admonition not to go any farther. One step backward and you're inside enjoying caribou steaks and Canadian whiskey. One step forward and you're in the wild--over 1 million square kilometers of frozen sea ice, dotted with blood stains where bears have dragged hapless seals from the water. Walk down Laverendrye Avenue on the back end of town and you'll see the stark contrast: movie theater, school, hospital, and then...badlands. All Churchillians have a sixth sense, like an internal compass, that tells them exactly where they re in relation to the invisible line. The line moves, too; it's different for different people, depending on the season, the time of day, the wind, and how immortal you're feeling at any given moment. If you respect the line, you can live your whole life in bear country without incident."

There's a couple of companies that cater to polar bear tourists in the summer, visitors usually with lots of disposable income (these tours are not cheap), seeking photo ops with bears from buses equipped to withstand the cold to take tourists out where bears have been spotted.

This is an interesting book and I would never had thought about reading it except for when I spotted it in an antique mall and was curious. The author writes with a wryness that brings self-deprecating humor to the subject.

[David Corleto-Bales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding exploration of the subject of polar bears in the Canadian Arctic and what the truth is regarding their future extinction. Unger looks at the debate not between climate change deniers and supporters; the science has clearly been validated that change is coming, but instead focuses on whether or not the polar bears will be able to adapt to the changes. The "heavy hitters" in the field of polar bear research suggest the polar bears are doomed, at least when they talk to the media, but there are indications that their gloom and doom scenarios have been exaggerated for effect. The truth is no one knows exactly how the bears will adapt. Unger spends several months in the town of Churchill, Manitoba, located on Hudson Bay smack dab in the middle of the polar bears' migration route and also comments on the sometimes potentially over the top tourist industry that has been built up around people wanting to see the bears and experience "the wild." With his Yukon wife and their two kids, Unger relocates to Manitoba to write this story from climactically less intense Oakland, California and becomes a well-known figure about the town that is filled with the usual interesting characters. Highly recommended.

[Lianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm surprised at some of the negative reviews of this book. Who doesn't want to know more about polar bears? They're not cute and cuddly, they're ferocious and at the top of the food chain. The author and his family spend a few months in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada to find out more about the polar bears. Are they becoming extinct? Is global warming taking away access to their food supply (mostly seals)? Are they resorting to cannibalism because of hunger? Can they survive on other food sources? This book was interesting, entertaining, and sometimes laugh out load funny. You too can visit Churchill and get to see a polar bear for yourself, but prepared to pay a lot of money and be very cold while doing so.

[Marianne Mersereau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am planning a trip to Churchill, Manitoba, the Polar Bear Capital of the World, and read this book in preparation. Mr. Unger published this book in 2013, and I couldn't help wondering while reading it how circumstances have most likely changed for the polar bear population there since the book's release. Almost a decade has gone by since he visited Churchill and the effects of climate change seem to have worsened in the last nine years. I am interested to learn more about the lives of the polar bears. This book has given me a good introduction to their habitat and the challenges they face.

[Wendy Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you read any other reviews of this book, you'll see that the writer is prickly and often judgmental -- some of his off-hand comments about people's body sizes is downright mean. I wish there was a warning label on the book about that!

On the other hand, the book is also frequently hilarious and always interesting. It is the story of a man who sets out to have a magical experience with polar bears but instead begins learning about the animal behind the symbol.

[Maire · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It's incredible what you can find out here," Rocky said, ratting off a list of birds and grasses that I forgot as quickly as he could say them. I'd come out to this desolate spot because I wanted to see polar bears, but it was starting to dawn on me that Rockwell was the kind of naturalist that has always filled me with dread: strip away all of his illustrious degrees and well-reviewed publications, and Rockwell was, deep down inside, a birdwatcher. (10)

And yet, for all of my conservation cheerleading, I was starting to have a hard time believing in my own sales pitch. I'd performed the requisite viewing of An Inconvenient Truth, and when I got together with friends, we had dorky arguments about whether fuel efficiency standards or increased gas taxes were the best way to reduce green house gases. But to be honest, I really wasn't seeing it. Global warming was so damned theoretical. The summers, like the winters, were either a little hotter or a little colder form one year to the next, just like they'd always been. I looked out at San Francisco Bay almost every day, and even when I went right up to the water's edge, it didn't look to be any higher than it had been when I was a kid. The Berkeley hills were green in winter and brown in summer; nothing new there. Where were the Africanized killer bees and poisonous snakes that were supposed to be marching relentlessly northward? Where were the malarial mosquitoes and the senior citizens dropping dead of heat stroke? I wasn't looking forward to that stuff, but I'd been trumpeting its arrival for so long that I felt almost cheated by the general harmony of things.
I wasn't so naive as to think that global warming would revolve around me. And I wasn't so weak a scientist that I couldn't understand the principles of incremental change and large-scale trends. Just because I couldn't see climate with my own eyes didn't mean it wasn't happening. Nonetheless, at some point you want to see a little return on investment, even when the currency is worry and the payoff is total global apocalypse. (18)

My home environment was too temperate and adaptable to see any real change, and besides, I was too close to it to notice, the way you can't tell that your kids are growing until the day they grab something off the top of the refrigerator. (19)

Getting a polar bear scientist to return your calls is as easy as convincing Mick Jagger to sing at your Labor Day picnic. (27)

I felt like I could watch that polar bear forever. I also felt like I might like to climb off the roof and make a sandwich. I tried to ignore that second thought, because it's important to be able to kind of mean it when you tell your friends that you felt like you could have watched that bear forever. (42)

I like to be able to drop people neatly into categories: smart, good-looking, open-minded lefties on one side, and greedy, disfigured, willfully ignorant fascist ditto-head kleptocrats on the other. (48)

Good science was more important to him than the specifics of any one particular issue. "A scientist's first commitment needs to be to science, not to the end result," he said. "A single-minded scientist leads us to the Dr. Mengele problem,"Rocky went on, referring to the Third Reich doctor who performed unspeakable human experiments under the cloak of scientific inquiry.
"Sure, but the opposite extreme is just as bad,"I said. "A scientist can't throw up his hands and say, 'I'm just splitting the atom here and I don't have any idea what the military might use it for.'" This was getting ridiculous. I'd gone nuclear and he'd gone Nazi, which is the universal symbol that any conversation has come unhinged. But polar bear have a way of doing that to people. (78)

"That's gonna be the new RCMP building there," my driver said, pointing to a half-built structure surrounded by five men in various stages of lunch break. RCMP refers to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are neither royal nor mounted, though on ceremonial occasions they do still wear spurs, flat-brimmed cowboy hats, and blood-red uniforms that add a high degree of difficulty to a surreptitious stakeout. (97)

Conversation ebbed as we rumbled out of town, the rhythmic thwack-thwack of the school bus tires lulling me into a stupor that was occasionally broken by the agonal respirations of the pneumonia patient alongside me. Everyone sat transfixed by the view of Hudson Bay. The gray sky funneled downward toward the grayer water, the two meeting in a hazy line like a charcoal sketch, some indeterminate number of miles offshore. It felt like we were on the edge of a vast and cruel-hearted ocean, the kind that routinely swallows luckless mariners. (203)

"I'm doing my best," she acknowledged, wiping away a tear that threatened to roll off her nose and onto my pant leg. "But it's not like I can, well, go live in a mud house and eat yard trimmings all day."
"I don't think anyone wants you to do that." How had this lady managed to get so old and still feel so guilty? It's one thing to have back-to-the-land flirtations as a teenager, but did people in their fifties still struggle with whether or not to live in a yurt? (205)

Everything about the buggy suggests labor, a bankrupting investment of fuel and metal and effort to get us into inhospitable territory. (216)

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

My deepest apologies to my mother who told me to read this months ago and finally had to mail it to me.
I love the way this book was written. I feel that the author is honest and open to all the different opinions he ferociously explores. The humor keeps all descriptions from feeling too long. And I like the conclusion he comes to about why we're so interested in polar bears.

[Rhonda · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best nature nature books I’ve read. Entertaining, balanced science, and informative. It checked all my nerdiest science and nature tick boxes.

[Nicole Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun book to read - and I enjoyed reading it while floating on a cruise ship from Canada to Alaska.

I appreciated that there were acknowledgements in the book both that things are not black and white and that often what we do in the name of trying to raise awareness of, or study climate change likely has a negative impact on the world we live in.

I also appreciated the humor and the mix of personal experience with history lesson and clearly explained science.

Favorite moments:
Never Look a Polar Bear in the Eye: A Family Field Trip to the Arctic’s Edge in Search of Adventure, Truth, and Mini-Marshmallows
-by Zac Unger

•As it turns out, getting a bunch of well-off eighteen-year-olds to convince themselves that they’re going to save the universe doesn’t exactly require sorcery. (p14)
•When you’ve got a green tinge to your soul, you’re always going to be a little bit insufferable. (p17)
•“You can’t believe everything you’re reading about polar bears in the papers.” It was just cryptic enough to be absolutely intriguing. (p30)
•A climate change skeptic wouldn’t waste the time on a trip to see what are essentially overgrown dogs rolling around in the dirt. But for the true believers, a trip to Churchill is a chance to decry the ills of modern society and congratulate themselves for being aware enough to head off the beaten path in search of Truth—never mind the carbon footprint of the trek. (p25)
•“Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.” –Thomas Henry Huxley, nineteenth-century biologist (p41)
•If anything, I think most people would say that science is too damned slow, and that once something is obvious—like the coming extinction of the polar bear—you ought to quit pissing away grant money and get out there and do something about the problem. (p77)
•…the promise of profit has a way of obscuring memories of the suffering of others. (p128)
•He shook his head ruefully, but it was obvious that being overwhelmed was nourishing to his soul. (p146)
•“We’re giving them the facts and the tools so that they can lead with their heads, but at the same time never be afraid to express the passion that they feel in their hearts.” (p146)
•“…what I’ve learned at Leadership Camp is that you can’t get into debates with people who don’t care. You can’t waste your time on people who won’t ever try to change. Some will, some won’t. So what. Who’s next?” (p150)
•It’s not entirely unpleasant, as it turns out, to be a witness at the beginning of the end of the world. Terrible that is has to happen, but so lucky that we all got here in time to see it for ourselves! (p163)
•The Canadian culinary repertoire relies heavily on ingredients that could be considered complete meals when served by themselves. Required staples include Corn Flakes, cream of mushroom soup, vanilla pudding, teriyaki Slim Jims, and the like. The semi-official national snack is poutine, which does double duty as the number one national heath crisis. (p166)
•“Heeeere polars,” he sang as he ran. “Come on out big bad beary-bears. .. . . You can have my little brooooother.” (p174)
•“Oh, OK,” said Mac, squirreling the information away into the portion of the immature male brain reserved for large carnivores, space travel, and catapults. (p176)
•We assessed one another and sorted ourselves out using the careful social calculus I hadn’t employed since lunch period in junior high school. (p213)
•There are a million problems to choose from, a million sad stories demanding our attention every day, but only a few of them break through the static. Polar bears had broken through… (p235)
•Even Brian Ladoon, a tailor-made villain if ever there was one, became impossible to pigeonhole after I got to know him. (p283)
•The evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson wrote, “We’re not just afraid of predators, we’re transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness survival. In a deep tribal sense, we love our monsters.” (p286)
•For a bear, the furthest reach of time is the distance to the next meal. Only humans think in decades. (p290)

[Lois Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book was a pleasure. I started and didn't stop until I was done. Mr. Unger has a bit of snark that makes the narrative zip along.

It's reportage rather than scientific analysis, which was a bit disappointing. It starts out seeming like sci analysis, because the first scientist who will take him in and talk to him is one challenging the 'heavy hitters' of polar bear science. The heavy hitters have gotten huge press/ink by proclaiming that polar bear will go extinct by 2050, which all of us have heard about/read (in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, for one), and which drives the author to go on this quest to find out as much about polar bears as he can, up to and including moving his family to Churchill for three months.

The first scientist who will talk to Unger is welcoming and invites Unger to visit his research facility. Brian Ladoon and Linda Gormezano, his female PhD-candidate colleague and her polar-bear-poop-sniffing-trained dog are studying polar bear scat, which shows that polar bears are eating geese, kelp, seastars, grasses, and other non-seal foods. This is a direct challenge to the conventional wisdom that they are starving and/or cannibalizing each other while they are waiting for winter ice to freeze. Scat analysis allows them to study and catalog the DNA of thousands, not scores or hundreds of bears that the heavy hitters/cowboys of science are chasing in 'copters, tranq-darting, tattooing, collaring, sampling. This guy sounds like a good solid scientist: he points out how much is unknown, how it is advocacy to say that the bears will be gone by 2050 - not science, what the danger is in doing that. I had so much respect for him and his work, I'm sorry I don't recall his name! If you were to read only part of this book, this is the part to read.

Unger doesn't overly stress it, but the research facility is on a hideous mud flat that gets worse every year. Because snow geese aren't being hunted the way they used to be, their populations have exploded, and they have strip-mined the flats for many years in a row. It's an excellent example of environmental destruction by natural means.

Until this book, the author - and I - did not know that polar bear populations are up and climbing and have been since polar bear hunting ceased in the 70s. At one time, there were fewer than ... should not have returned the book! 5,000, I think, and now there are 25,000 bears? That seems like a lot. Maybe it was 700, and now there are 2,500? There's been about a seven-fold increase in polar bears. They were far more endangered before now.

A lot of the book is about Churchill: physicality, circus aspects, the various personalities who make money from the polar bear tourist trade, the year-round residents, the weather, the town's interactions with the bears, the bear police and the bear jail.

At the end of the book, Unger finally is granted an audience with THE heavy hitter, Steve Amstrup, the guy quoted in all the articles. He seems like a solid scientist in his interview with Unger, and Unger is assuaged that, unlike his suspicions after meeting with the first scientist, Heavy Hitter is engaging in science not advocacy. However, a few days later, the Heavy Hitter takes part in a press conference during which he espouses things that are clearly not true, in the name of advocacy. Good grief!

Then Unger takes his wife and kids and goes home, but not before one last wander around Churchill in the snow where he has a face to face encounter with a polar bear that obviously does not result in him having his face ripped off.

I wish the book had spent more time going into the science. I would happily read a book about the work of Landoon and Gormezano.

The book's point is that while it behooves advocacy to get people's attention with a charismatic mascot as a relate-able symbol, and the polar bear is IT for global warming these days, the science on polar bears is more complicated than the sound bite. I would have like more analysis of the science.

[Carl Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author, fascinated with the annual polar bear migration through Churchill, Manitoba, brings his family north to learn more about the ferocious yet beloved predator. He captures vignettes of scientists, residents, tourists, conservationists, and polar bear tour operators. The writing isn't overly cohesive, and the people he encounters all seem to have an agenda of their own. The book feels rather scattershot and episodic, but does pique my curiosity about polar bears.

[Eva Celeste · Rating 3 out of 5]

I vacillated between 3 and 4 stars and finally went with three for a few different reasons. For starters, the title, while super cute, is a bit misleading. I picked the book up off of the library shelves knowing nothing about it, looked at the title, and flipped through the photos section. Lots of pictures of the author's adorable small children and wife hanging out in Churchill, Manitoba. Looked cute, heartwarming, a family adventure.

However, the book actually goes in a lot of different directions, and the author's family is really only the tiniest sliver of the story. It's true that they went along and lived in an unfurnished apartment on the edge of town, and there are a few adorable anecdotes about his children, particularly the middle son, looking for "polars." Otherwise, it seems as if his wife & kids picked up from their lives in California and moved up to the middle of nowhere to hang out and eat canned foods in their pajamas and pick their noses while the author traipsed around in search of adventures & truth. Maybe they couldn't all bear (no pun intended) to be apart that long. Anyway, I'm not really sure why his family went along or what they were doing to entertain themselves while he was doing all the other things he describes, but suffice it to say that most of this book has nothing to do with any "family field trips."

Essentially, Unger, who is a very engaging writer and also quite humorous, was an environmental studies major in college. He's about my age, has a family with demographics not entirely unlike my own, and, as a yuppie hippie (which is how I describe my Whole Foods demographic), felt himself drawn to learn more about the plight of the polar bear.

Disclaimer: I am a bad yuppie hippie. I did not know there was all this publicity about polar bears dying off. Yes, I knew about climate change and many varieties of horribleness it threatens to unleash upon the modern world, including the flooding of farmland, massive droughts, loss of species across the board, possible pandemics, to name a few. I just didn't know about the fact that the polar bear was, apparently, the current symbol of the world's possible imminent environmental destruction.

Anyway, Unger drops a whole bunch of his money & time into this project, travels up to the "polar bear capitol of the world" in Churchill, and details his experiences in this book. As I mentioned before, his writing is quite amusing as well as informative, and I laughed out loud more than once. However, his book suffers from a total lack of direction. Essentially, he goes on every tour, talks to scientists, talks to townspeople, explores the history of the town, gives background about the way polar bear populations are calculated, follows minor celebrities and film crews around, with his central question being, seemingly, "What's this polar bear obsession all about, anyway?"

Lacking focus, the book meanders and even Unger's prose couldn't keep me interested in hearing about yet another tangentially related story of how he went on this or that "adventure" searching for the ultimate meaning of polar bears for humanity. He also repeats himself quite a bit. Perhaps a bit of generous editing and repackaging could have pushed this book up to squarely 4 stars or beyond. Recommended, although not without reservations.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as an advanced reader's copy from Netgalley. In Never Look a Polar Bear in the Eye, Zac Unger begins by wanting to embed himself for a few weeks with researchers studying polar bears. He is unable to secure a position with the scientists who are considered the elite researchers in the field, but winds up spending a couple of weeks outside Churchill, Manitoba with a scientist who begins to make him question whether what the news and the elite scientists are telling us about the inevitable demise of polar bears due to global warming is in fact accurate. The book then takes a shift when Unger decides to move to Churchill for three months with his wife and their three young children. The story then becomes not only about the polar bears, but about the town of Churchill and its existence as a tourist destination for viewing polar bears in their native habitat.

I really enjoyed the book, and appreciate the insight it gave me into the actual experience of being in Churchill and going on one of the polar bear excursions. My husband is probably wishing I had never read the book because it refueled my own desire to go on one of these trips. I first heard about them years ago during the Vancouver Olympics. Despite the fact that Churchill isn't anywhere near Manitoba there was a story about these excursions during the Olympic coverage. I love polar bears and always tell my husband I want one as a pet. He just informs me that it would eat me. There are only a few short weeks when these vacations happen and they happen to fall around the time of my anniversary, so I like to ask my husband which anniversary is the polar bear anniversary. Should I ever get to go on one of these trips I am glad that I read this book ahead of time because it really gave a lot of good information about how austere Churchill is. There would be no glamor in going to Churchill itself. It will be cold and ugly, but despite all that I finish this book assured that viewing polar bears in the wild is a majestic and awe inspiring experience that would make the discomfort of the rest of the trip worth it.

[Douglas Lord · Rating 5 out of 5]

This terrifically energetic, dude-friendly adventure, originally published in 2005, mixes ecology with travel and is informative and endearingly funny. Unger is a family man (“…not a nutcase with a bear fetish or a shrill environmental warrior”) who likes the woods, eats organic, and feels guilty about getting crappy mileage on his minivan. After earning a master’s in environmental science from Berkeley, he stopped hoping that the Navy SEALS would open “a small division for peacenik forest rangers” and became (naturally) an Oakland fireman (Working Fire: The Making of a Fireman). Though attuned to climate issues and global warming, Unger grew impatient to see its effects and decided to search them out. In autumn 2008, he bundled his wife and three young kids (ages five, four, and two) up to the “plucky trailer park” of Churchill, Manitoba (pop. 943), that is the polar bear tourist capital of the world to “see the great bears before they died, to witness man’s destruction of one of the last great things on earth….” There he joined a polar bear poop-gathering expedition, saw dozens of bears up close, and ruminated on their habitat. His narrative is chock-a-block with fascinating descriptive passages on myriad subjects like the history of Churchill, bear lifting a “repeat offender” northwards, and describing “tundra buggying,” a sort of whale watch in “an unholy union between an RV and a FEMA trailer.” Unger finds that while the bears are indeed jeopardized, the empirical evidence is often murky. Unger’s love of his family is completely charming, as is this book. Photos show Churchill and some of its polars up close and also reveal Unger to be as good looking as Justin Timberlake with a unibrow.
Verdict If you like any two of the following boxes, try it: polar bears; travelogs; humor writing;  family adventures.
Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.

[Victoria Sanchez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm beginning to feel like I'm that hard grader everyone hates to get - once again, I'm going with "liked it". Unger's subject is one of my favorites: polar bears doing their thing. For me, it's hard to go wrong with polar bears as subject because you just can't f with them, they're beautiful in a master-of-the-universe kind of way, and they remind us to think about the larger global ecosystem. So the book. Unger's writing is clean, funny, and well groomed. I enjoy Unger's writing voice and his point of view and, from what little was revealed, his family's point of view as well. But this book stops at three stars because all of that is just not enough - the book just doesn't go deep enough into the story of the polar bears and their PR machine. Credit where credit is due - it takes a tremendous amount of planning, cash, employer-generosity, and family good-will to accomplish what Unger pulled off but it wasn't enough in order to make this book really great. And let me clarify, this is not about Unger's writing. He is a really, really engaging, well organized writer. When he introduces us to the the town, I want to be there. I want to be in the Ungers' house, sleeping on the floor. And I really want to be on all those bear hunts. But he really hooked me with his portraits of the scientists - I wanted to know everything Rockwell had to say to the author and more! But the only way for the reader to get that depth is for Unger to spend more time with Rockwell and his team...and for that matter, in Churchill, and with the town people. This is such a lame metaphor but I feel like this book revealed just the tip of the iceberg and then stopped cold. Unger proves he has the journalistic talent and clear passion to get an angle on the the subject many others haven't touched. Next time - next book? - I'd love to see him spend the time necessary to follow it further. He wants to be the environmental cause superstar? Write us more of that plain-spoken, funny journalism and help all of us become really well informed with the facts, not just "content".

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

More than anything else, this book has to do with Zac Unger's search for truth about the polar bears and adventures related to them, mini-marshmallows not so much. Also, the parts mentioning his family, while entertaining and interesting, play a small part overall in the book.

The big question seems to be: Are polar bears going to become extinct as a result of global warming? The answer seems to be: Depends on who you ask and when. There's plenty of information to make up your own mind as well as the conclusions that Zac draws. There are of course lots of little questions as well and memorable people to meet like Linda Gormezano and Brian Ladoon. This mostly takes place in and around Churchill in Manitoba, Canada.

Churchill is a town on the shore of the Hudson Bay famous for the number of polar bears that move toward the shore from the inland in the fall waiting for the bay to freeze over.Churchill has developed quite a tourism industry around the presence of the polar bears during this time of year. The tundra buggies and their similar counterparts roll out for tours. People show up from all over the world. Even Zac Unger takes a tour on one of these vehicles in an effort to get closer to the polar bears.

It's an interesting book. He finds some truth for himself. It gets a little bogged down in the science in places. For the title, it could have used more involvement with his family. I was expecting it to be a little bit of a lighter read because of the title. It's still an enjoyable book. I gave it 3 out of 5 stars.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

2023 own keep

in reviews section eshonsteom pretty much captures my views of this book, much more eloquently than I will do. Basically, I found this book a rare mixture of nature and environmental science writing mixed with travel writing and filled with lots of humor, though admittedly his humor could be bitingly judgmental sometimes. He shined a light on complications with current “science” regarding global warming and its effects on polar bears. I thought he presented a fair balance of skepticism and potential belief in the eventual demise of the polar bear, he also spotlighted how the story of their demise is driving tourism, which in turn is helping fuel their demise, but also providing money for additional research. It’s circular, and inconclusive, and doesn’t end with a nice neat wrap-up with bow, which is a bit frustrating. I think some reviewers have accused him of having an agenda and of being right-winged, because he doesn’t end with a call to activism to save the bears. I think he says it best himself when he says he wanted a definitive answer, but there is enough conflicting evidence to make that impossible to make — based on fact, and not preconceived ideas . His description of his children and wife is entertaining and warm. His description of Churchill is also very interesting, as are some of the characters he met.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amusing book about the truth about the end of the Polar Bear or not. It was a good reminder that even though the truth is out there, it might not be recognizable. What was clear from this book is that getting to the science is not easy but getting to the marketing of the science is. Unger spends time with a scientist that was studying what Polar Bears eat when they weren't eating seal and tried to get him to refute what the other scientists were saying - and what he said was a whole bunch of we really don't know the details. How many polar bears were there really in 1970? Do the polar bears get any nutritional value from eating geese and goose eggs and caribou? How much cannibalism is going on now and is it different from the past? How adaptable is the polar bear anyway? As always it is easier to sell everything as all or nothing. Seeing incremental change without careful measurement is hard (unless you are studying ice cores or tree rings. Worth reading and a fun read - but don't expect proof out of this book - and the author doesn't claim it to be there.