Since the beginning of human history, bears have been regarded as animals of great power. Ethnobotanist and cultural anthropologist Wolf Storl, who spent years in the wilderness with bears, explores the fascinating relationship between bears and humans, including the history, mythology, healing lore, and biology of this formidable creature. Storl takes the reader from the bear caves of the Neanderthals to the bear-worshipping Siberian tribes of today, from the extinct cave bear to the modern teddy bear. Bears were traditionally seen as a kind of "forest human" under whose shaggy fur a king or a god was hidden, he explains. Vividly illustrating the power of myths and fairy tales to reveal more than scientific treatises about the true nature of beings--especially in the case of bears--Storl restores this magnificent animal to its rightful place at the forefront of the human imagination as well as among the dwellers of the forest.

In what may be his boldest and most controversial book, Paul Shepard presents an account of human behavior and ecology in light of our past. In it, he contends that agriculture is responsible for our ecological decline and looks to the hunting and gathering lifestyle as a model more closely in tune with our essential nature. Shepard advocates affirming the profound and beautiful nature of the hunter and gatherer, redefining agriculture and combining technology with hunting and gathering to recover a livable environment and peaceful society.

Ecotone: Wayfaring on the Margins, a personal history of place, is written from the perspective of a teacher, naturalist, and feminist and uses the metaphor of the biological ecotone as the boundary where inner and outer landscapes of the woman/nature continuum meet. In this book, Krall proposes a counter-narrative to the usual reading of marginality. In autobiographical narrative that rings with experience, she describes margins as rich as dynamic abodes, places of crossing over and transition as well as spaces of separation and alienation. In reinterpreting journeys and encounters, she maps the shared terrain of the personal, social, and natural fields of our lives. She draws upon Native American sensibilities about place, relationship, and the sacred, in order to deepen our understanding of human/nature bonds, to more fully develop respect and responsibility to others, and to heal the rifts that sometimes set humans at odds with other humans and non-human creatures and threaten life on earth.

Peter Lamborn Wilson proposes a set of heresies, a culture of resistance, that dispels the false image of Islam as monolithic, puritan, and two-dimensional. Here is the story of the African-American noble Drew Ali, the founder of “Black Islam” in this country, and of the violent end of his struggle for “love, truth, peace, freedom, and justice.” Another essay deals with Satan and “Satanism” in Esoteric Islam; and another offers a scathing critique of “Authority” and sexual misery in modern Puritanist Islam. “The Anti-caliph” evokes a hot mix of Ibn Arabi’s tantric mysticism and the revolutionary teachings of the “Assassins.” The title essay, “Sacred Drift,” roves through the history and poetics of Sufi travel, from Ibn Khaldun to Rimbaud in Abyssinia to the Situationists. A “Romantic” view of Islam is taken to radical extremes; the exotic may not be “True,” but it’s certainly a relief from academic propaganda and the obscene banality of simulation. "This is my brand of Islam: insurrectionary, elegant, dangerous, suffused with light – a search for poetic facts, a donation from and to the tradition of spiritual anarchy." —Hakim Bey "Peter Lamborn Wilson, in his book Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam, offers an interesting window into the early evolution of Islamic ideas among African Americans." —Abbas Milani, New Republic Peter Lamborn Wilson lives in New York and works for Semiotext(e) magazine, Pacifica Radio, and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. A long decade in the Orient (1968-1981) inspires his writing, including The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry and Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy. He also investigates Celtic psychoactive plants in his book Ploughing the Clouds which is also published by City Lights Publishers.

The angry grizzly and the cuddly teddy: few animals possess such a range of personas as the bear. Here, Robert Bieder surveys the wealth of imagery, myths, and stories that surrounds the bear. Beginning with the dawn bear, the small dog-sized ancestor of all bears who hails from 25 million years ago, Bieder embarks on a fascinating exploration of the evolutionary history of the bear family, from extinct species such as the cave bear and giant short-faced bear to the mere eight species that survive today. Bear draws on cultural material from around the world to examine the various legends and myths surrounding the bear, including ceremonies and taboos that govern the hunting, killing, and eating of bears. The book also looks at the role of bears in modern culture as the subjects of stories, songs, and films; as exhibited objects in circuses and zoos; and, perhaps most famously, as toys. Bieder also considers the precarious future of the bear as it is threatened by loss of habitat, poaching, global warming, and disease and discusses the impact of human behavior on bears and their environments. Accompanied by numerous vibrant photographs and illustrations, and written in an engaging fashion, Bear is an appealing and informative volume for anyone who has curled up with Winnie-the-Pooh or marveled at this powerful king of the forest.

Comprehensive and cross-referenced, this informative volume is a rich introduction to the world of nature as experienced by ancient peoples around the globe. 51 halftones.