Review by Martha Quillen
Wildlife – April 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine – No. 2 – Page 28
Bear Attacks
by Stephen Herrero
Published in 1985 by Nick Lyons/Winchester Press
ISBN: 0-8329-0377-9
A GREAT READ, Bear Attacks blends the chilling terror of Jurassic Park with the peaceful warmth of a James Herriot work. Herrero, a leading expert on bears, spares no grim details when discussing maulings, but presents those details with a mind toward prevention.
And he fills his book with anecdotes, both sentiments1 and humorous.
— A tale of a black bear who whimpered but didn’t attack while she shielded her cub from rock-throwing youngsters.
— An inexperienced fellow observer who startled a grizzly, then ran, as the old joke goes, not faster than a grizzly, but faster than the guy behind him. This left Herrero to test his theory of what to do when facing a charging grizzly.
Herrero’s theory worked, and later he wrote Bear Attacks, which is as much the story of a man who loves bears as it is a volume of research. Yet Herrero never reduces his subjects to Disneyesque cuteness; bears are intelligent, curious, playful, fascinating and even clever, but always wild animals.
It’s not often that an educational book is so entertaining. But don’t read it when you’re out camping — unless you want to break camp the first time a tree creaks in the wind.
