Bear in Mind: The California Grizzly

"Part of humankinds enduring fascination and connection with bears lies in the similarity between us and them. Bears stand upright and their footprints resemble ours. A skinned bear looks much like a naked person. They are intelligent and independent, possessed of distinct personalities. They exemplify maternal care, discipline, and teaching, and they nurse in a sitting position. They can use a claw like a finger or two claws like chopsticks. They can travel fast and lose their tempers. They are omnivorous, and can kill and eat us, as we can kill and eat them. Resilient, brave, and defiant, the California grizzly did not go quietly."Susan Snyder, from the Introduction

_Bear in Mind_ is the story of the California grizzly bear. Once arguably the most powerful and terrifying animal in the California landscape, he now lives in the imagination, a disembodied symbol of the romantic West. _Bear in Mind_ is also a portal into one of Californias great resources, the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. More than 150 images from the librarys archives and collectionsnewspaper illustrations from the gold rush, paintings from early scientific expeditions, photo albums, sheet music, settlers diaries, fruit-crate labels, and moreaccompany the bear stories of Indians, explorers, vaqueros, forty-niners, and naturalists, among others. The result is a uniquely compelling natural history, a grand book worthy of its subject.