Thomas McNamee

From reviews of "The Grizzly Bear":

"The Grizzly Bear" by Thomas McNamee is a splendid hunk of writing by a real journalist who has managed to get down the awesome natural history of the bear and its equally awesome politics while keeping decently accurate, objective and--surprise!-- exciting. A commanding accomplishment...this book sings.
--Los Angeles Times (David Graber)

McNamee is a Byronically fluent stylist....McNamee has furnished us with the most complete biography of the grizzly yet to appear, and certainly the most compelling testimony in the animal's defense.
--San Francisco Chronicle (John Wilkes)

"The Grizzly Bear" [will] appeal to two kinds of people: those who love grizzly bears and those who love fine writing. It succeeds brilliantly.
--Atlanta Journal & Constitution (Janet Ward)

McNamee, a poet whose verse has been published in The New Yorker, does a wonderful job of evoking the enigmatic and infinitely variable grizzly....
--Washington Post (Bruce Brown)

Mr. McNamee has a storyteller's skill and writes a moving chronicle.
--The Wall Street Journal (Edmund Fuller)

There is a particular type of book [that appeals] to a wide range of readers and draws upon a variety of disciplines--the sciences, certainly, but also history, mythology, folklore, anthropology, sociology, politics, economics, and the like. Not the least of all, they are deeply philosophical. The best are works of art, too, noteworthy for their poetic imagegry and distinctive narrative styles. Such a book is William Warner's "Beautiful Swimmers." Another is Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." Thomas McNamee's "The Grizzly Bear" is a third...a fascinating and literate work.
--Newport News Daily Press (Keith F. McLoughland)

It is a remarkable piece of wildlife biology, management and observation, and a good deal more...eloquently beautiful...spry, focused, and impressively researched...sensitive and carefully correct without being stodgy and technical...compassionate, readable and fascinating...profoundly literate...a remarkable book.
--Memphis Commercial Appeal (Robert Jennings)

One of the best books to come out of the American wilderness in many years...an elegant yet vigorously colloquial prose style...passionate but unblinkered.
--Chicago Sun Times Book Week (Henry Kisor)

Easily the best book on its subject...sophisticated, persuasive, and involved. Unlike so many popular journalists, who reduce wildlife controversies to black and white, McNamee does not shy away from deal with subtleties, with shade of intention and desire that aren't easily labeled good or bad.
--Orion

It is impossible to read the book and not feel a tingling of awe for the great creature and a sort of helpless sadness over its plight.
--Outside

McNamee's first book is as solid as the sinewy muscles of a young boar grizzly. He is the first author to go to such great lengths to understand the bear, and to translate that understanding for his readers. McNamee's book is a landmark toward breaking down that wall of misunderstanding that keeps us from allowing the grizzly the necessary elbow room for existence.
--High Country News

I have liked best during '84, I suppose, a book named "The Grizzly Bear" by a young writer named Thomas McNamee. It is a thorough, scientific/​poetic exploration...but also a fine metaphor for the evolving relationship between Man and Nature.
--Maine Times (John Cole)

McNamee's book does what the ancients said a really good book should do: delight while it instructs.
--Not Man Apart

A deeply researched, well-written narrative. This fine book comes at a crucial time and provides great reading.
--Sports Afield

[A] very excellent book. McNamee tells about the grizzly in North America in the most compelling way possible: by enacting a scenario of a year in the life of a female grizzly and her two cubs. He does this without stooping to maudlin Bambi-like anthropomorphism, and he intersperses the scenario with scholarly, well documented narrative. His book may well become the definitive study of Ursus arctos horribilis. His writing style is lyrical and at times profoundly poetic. His book is a singular literary achievement of first literary effort.
--Houston Post (Charles Thobae)

The best compendium of grizzly bear information available.
--Sierra

There are more than 250 books, articles, and scientific papers listed in this fine book's bibliography, each of them directly related to the grizzly bear. After two readings of Thomas McNamee's passionate, poetic, humorous, detailed, insightful, comprehensive, and entertaining treatise on America's largest carnivore, I would need a great deal of convincing before being persuaded that I could learn any more about the grizzly by reading any or all of the 250. "The Grizzly Bear" goes beyond nature; it looks into the mind of Man. We travel with mother and cubs through time, through her Yellowstone range, thorugh adventures and misadventures, each so gracefully recounted in prose so wonderfully free of the sentiment and anthropomorphism that so often subverts such narratives that we are quite convinced of the bear's reality in every dimension.
--Amicus Journal

Thorough, informative, and very, very interesting...a fine summary of the present state of affairs and a book well worth reading.
--Cleveland Plain Dealer (John R. Alden)

An exhaustively researched account...rich in detail on [the grizzly's] natural history and a forceful portrait of the bureaucratic jungle in which the grizzly must live. "The Grizzly Bear" provides the most comprehensive account of grizzly bear ecology that has yet been assembled. It is bursting with infromation on all aspects of grizzly life...."The Grizzly Bear" is such a thorough source of facts and insight that its readers will very likely become among the best informed on the subject.
--Riverside (Ca) Press-Enterprise (Katherine C. Kendall)

...Clean, bright griz-country prose...a book well worth attention.
--Defenders

...A poet's linguistic grace, a naturalist's approach to living things, and a scientist's eye for detail and method....
--Booklist

A well-balanced and provocative book which blends a wealth of scientific fact with a fine literary style....This book can stand with the classic treatises on grizzlies and with the lyrical nature writing of Carson, Dillard, et al. Highly recommended.
--Library Journal

It's a magic book, bursting with nature lore and strong feeling, by a talented new writer.
--Kirkus

I read it with much enjoyment and profit. It zeroes in on a lot of things that needed to be revealed, explained, and interrelated. The writing is superb.
--Dr. Durward L. Allen, author of "The Wolves of Minong"

"The Grizzly Bear" is a very fine work that instructs and illuminates at many levels...a wise, questioning book. McNamee has a rare talent for lasering through the forbidding stuff of sciencespeak and agencyspeak to interpret precisely what is relevant.
--Douglas H. Chadwick, author of "A Beast the Color of Winter"

A masterful work of natural history and reportage...the best I have ever had the pleasure of reading on this subject.
--Andy Russell, author of "Grizzly Country"

This is not only a great study of the natural history
of Griz, it gives an up close and personal look at the day-to-day life of one of nature's greatest creatures.
--GrizTrax Magazine