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A double review with Polar Bears: The Natural History of a Threatened Species
by Ian Stirling
Fitzhenry and Whiteside, Markham, Ontario, 2011
350 pp., illus., $40 paperback

For thousands of years, Arctic peoples have treated polar bears with the greatest respect — not just because of their fearsome size and strength but because bears are remarkably similar to human beings.

As renowned wildlife biologist Ian Stirling points out, polar bears can stand and walk on their hind legs. They can learn to use tools. When killed and skinned, their torsos look strikingly human. Thus, traditional societies held elaborate rituals after killing a polar bear to ensure its soul would return to its family.

Stirling is not only one of the world’s foremost authorities on polar bears, he also respects them deeply — a quality that shows through in his accessibly written natural history. Every page of his book Polar Bears is illustrated with striking photographs, maps, or graphs and the material is well-organized. With forty years of research behind him, Stirling addresses questions such as the impact of global warming on bears with solid science.

Kieran Mulvaney’s The Great White Bear covers some of the same ground and is written in a more narrative style. It’s based on interviews with experts and non-experts and on accounts of Mulvaney’s own trips in the North. The writing is sometimes poetic — “northern lights dripped from the heavens, as if a razor blade had sliced open the sky and aurora had spilled out.”

The difference between the two books is that Stirling the expert writes from the inside out; Mulvaney the journalist writes from the outside in. Both are good resources.

This review appeared in the August-September 2012 issue of Canada's History magazine.