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American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee
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American Wolf

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American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee
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Jul 31, 2018 | ISBN 9781101902806

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    Jul 31, 2018 | ISBN 9781101902806

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  • Oct 17, 2017 | ISBN 9781101902790

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  • Oct 17, 2017 | ISBN 9780525493280

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Praise

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Shortlisted for the 2018 J. Anthony Lukas Prize
An Outside Magazine Best Book of 2017
A Science Friday Best Science Book of 2017


“Blakeslee draws O-Six in novelistic… detail, using the conflicting insight and perspective of biologists, politicians, ranchers, environmentalists, lawyers, other animals, and hunters…. Seeing a wolf is exceptionally rare, and this book is as close as most readers will come.” 
The New Yorker

“A matriarch overthrown in what seems fairly described as a ‘putsch,’ marauding gangs running attacks into neighboring territory, an hours-long standoff with a grizzly, a discarded water bottle—a rarity in the wilderness of a national park—tossed around and protected like a prized new toy. The lives of the wolves in Yellowstone are often dramatic, but are full of touching, tender moments too, as Nate Blakeslee vividly writes in American Wolf.”
Los Angeles Times
 
“The story of one wolf’s struggle to survive in the majestic Yellowstone National Park offers an ambitious look through the eyes of an endangered animal.”
New York Times Book Review

“Ambitious… a significant and engaging work. It’s easy to write about the importance of local social life. It’s harder to know what to do to support it…. Klinenberg’s argument has a powerful simplicity. Look after the social infrastructure and social bonds will largely look after themselves.”
—Financial Times

American Wolf takes its place in a long lineage of wolf books…. [T]here are cherished, striking images here…testament to the ever-flowing life force that is the wolf.”
Rick Bass, New York Times Book Review

“[American Wolf] is a startlingly intimate portrait of the intricate, loving, human-like interrelationships that govern wolves in the wild, as observed in real time by a cadre of dedicated wolf-watchers—in the end, a drama of lupine love, care, and grief.”
Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake 
 
“Wild, poignant, and compelling, American Wolf is an important, beautifully wrought book about animals, about values, and about living on this earth.”
Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin
 
“A transcendent tale of the American West.”
S. C. Gwynne, author of Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell
 
“Gripping and fascinating! Wolf versus wolf, wolf versus man, man versus man.”
Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale and Hag-Seed (via Twitter)

“In this vibrant work of nonfiction, a Texas Monthly writer goes into the mind—and heart—of a wolf. He tells the remarkable true story of O-Six, a wolf brought back to the Rockies by conservationists, as she fights hunters, cattle ranchers, and her own species for survival.”
Entertainment Weekly

“[American Wolf] reads like a novel… a testament to the genius of Blakeslee’s tautly constructed narrative.”
Outside

“Blakeslee takes readers into the snowy [Lamar Valley], and deep into a genuinely human tale told with the energy and verve of a bestselling thriller. A tight, dense narrative, American Wolf races along like a predator on the hunt.”
—Texas Observer

“A masterful and elegant tale.”
Associated Press

“Beautiful, detailed… [American Wolf] centers on the rise, reign, and family life of O-Six, matriarch of the Lamar Canyon pack and so well-known to park visitors that the New York Times gave her an obituary.”
Publisher’s Weekly (starred) 

“The fight… [over] Yellowstone’s wolves is embodied in O-Six’s story, told with great immediacy and empathy in a tale that reads like fiction. This one will grab readers and impel them into the heart of the conflict.”
Booklist (starred)

“Utterly compelling…. Blakeslee’s masterly use of fiction writing techniques to ratchet up the tension will hook a wide swath of readers.”        
Library Journal (starred)

“A savory blend of hardcore journalism, biodiversity analysis, weather and terrain reporting and good old-fashioned storytelling… American Wolf is the tale of an extraordinary wolf and those absorbed with her storied life.”
Shelf Awareness
 
“Nate Blakeslee has achieved the Jack London-like feat of creating a great story whose main character is an animal.”
Nicholas Lemann, author of The Big Test and Redemption
 
“There are so few wolves in the West that each one can cast a kind of enchantment. This fine book takes one animal, and uses it as a way to understand the vectors that whipsaw the last wild places. It will linger in your mind and heart.”
Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Radio Free Vermont

American Wolf is an intimate and riveting book about America’s most iconic and embattled predator…. A wonderful and welcome addition to the pantheon of nature literature.”
John Vaillant, author of The Tiger and The Golden Spruce

“A well-rendered story… evenhanded but clearly and rightly on the side of the wolves.”
Kirkus Reviews

“Gorgeously written, and offering stunning insights into both animal and human nature, American Wolf is a masterly feat of science journalism.”
Michael Finkel, author of The Stranger in the Woods

“Engaging… a must read for researchers, citizen scientists, and visitors to Yellowstone, where the story of the wolves continues to evolve.” 
Science

 
“As in a great novel, we are swept along in a multi-generational saga involving matters of character, courtship, and shifting social relations.”
—Tom Kizzia, author of Pilgrim’s Wilderness
 
“Heartbreaking front-line coverage of our war on the wild…. Blakeslee hauntingly gives the victims faces, families, and stories. A quietly angry, aching, important book.”
Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast
 
“A compelling environmental drama of the reintroduction of wolves to the Rockies, as clear-sighted on human politics as it is on wolf politics.”
—Neil Ansell, author of Deep Country
 
“The Game of Thrones story of modern western wolves, [unfolding] in just as riveting a fashion. It is an absolutely mesmerizing read.”
Dan Flores, author of Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History
 
American Wolf gives us true profiles of wolf lives lived in their actual families. And when humans get involved, the trajectory of their lives forever changes.”
Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel
 
“Written with heart, but not sentimentality, American Wolf is nothing less than Shakespearean tragedy played out against the backdrop of our troubled relationship with nature.”
J.B. MacKinnon, author of The Once and Future World

“[American Wolf] is about the compatibility and clash between man and environment, heritage and the future, politics and practice, and seemingly countless nuances that demonstrate the complexity of the West.”
Idaho Statesman

“O-Six is the definition of an alpha—strong, cunning, and a protector through and through. Her life in the wild is constantly challenged by other wolves, cattle ranchers, and hunters. It’s a “cultural clash” that will leave you on the edge of your chair.”
Departures

“[A] rich, poignant story of wolf recovery in Yellowstone and its impacts on the surrounding countryside and communities.”  
National Parks Traveler

“Blakeslee crafts a compelling narrative that allows him to explore in a profound and intimate way the cultural, political, social and economic factors that keep the presence of wolves in the West controversial.”
International Wolf

Awards

J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize FINALIST 2018

Author Q&A

A Conversation with Nate Blakeslee, author of
AMERICAN WOLF

(Crown; October 17, 2017)

Q) You live with your family in Austin, Texas. How did you come to write American Wolf, a story about Yellowstone?
A) I was born and raised in Texas, but I spent a lot of time in the Northern Rockies when I was in my early twenties, working summer jobs in Jackson, Wyoming, with friends from college. It was one of the happiest times in my life, and I’ve looked for a reason to get back there every summer since. In 2007, I took a wolf-watching class in Yellowstone, where I met Rick McIntyre, the park’s wolf guru. I knew I wanted to write about wolves and the controversy that surrounded them, but wasn’t sure how to do it until I heard the story of O-Six.

Q) American Wolf isn’t just about Yellowstone wolves and their struggles; it’s also about the political fights that invisibly shape these wolves’ lives. Can you describe the forces at play during the events of this book? How have those forces changed since then?
A) Ranchers and hunting guides stood to lose the most if wolves were brought back to the Northern Rockies, and they fought the reintroduction plan for years. Later they lobbied to remove wolves from the endangered species list as quickly as possible, so that their numbers could be reduced through hunting and trapping. Wolves have a powerful constituency, too, which has grown as wolf-watching in Yellowstone has become a key part of the tourist economy in the region. Today wolves are hunted in all three states that surround Yellowstone—Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Wolves inside Yellowstone National Park are still protected, though most packs roam across the park’s borders, which means Yellowstone wolves are frequently lost to hunting and trapping.

Q) You say in the book that wolves have become deeply polarizing in the West—on par with abortion or gun control or war in the Middle East. Everyone seems to have an opinion. What’s at stake for people when it comes to wolf reintroduction? Why is it such a hotly contested issue? Will we ever reach consensus?
A) Greater Yellowstone is the world’s largest remaining essentially intact temperate ecosystem, but it was not complete until the return of the wolf. We tend to think of wilderness as the opposite of civilization—there is the natural world, and then there is the world we have made for ourselves. But in a place as thoroughly exploited as the American West, wilderness is something that has to be created, too. Decisions about how best to restore a landscape—what to include and what to leave out—are political decisions, and there are always winners and losers just as there are in any other arena of policymaking.

Q) What do people like Steven Turnbull and the other anti-wolf characters in the book reveal about America today? What are their grievances, and how does this shed light on the bigger divisions in our country?
A) The debate over how best to manage wolves is part and parcel of a larger and much older contest—the question of how public land in the West should be used, and who should get to decide. Much of the Northern Rockies, like the West in general, is national forest or other public land, which means that even those of us who don’t live in the area have a say over how it is managed. The rise of the environmental movement in the 1970s threatened the traditional uses of that land—such as logging, mining, and hunting—and that in turn has engendered resentment against the federal government. In many ways it is a cultural division, though the politics at play are more complex than they first appear.
Q) What are your own views on hunting?
A) Central Texas, where I live, is overrun with far too many white-tailed deer—a consequence of aggressive predator control by many generations of ranchers. If it weren’t for the thousands of hunters who visit every fall, the repercussions (disease, starvation, habitat damage) would be much worse. Having said that, I recognize that the “Texas model” of hunting—shooting deer from a blind as they feed on corn you have put out for them, or paying big money to hunt selectively bred trophy deer behind a high fence—is anathema to elk-hunting aficionados in the Rockies (not to mention many of my fellow Texans).

Q) Obsession is an animating theme in the book—everyone is “on the hunt” in some way. What is it about these wolves, and the American West, that courts such fascination?
A) We live in an era when species are disappearing from the earth at a faster rate than any time since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Most of what we do to counter that slowly unfolding disaster feels like a finger in the dam. Wolf reintroduction, by contrast, was a grand gesture, the kind of large-scale intervention that could only have been done in the West, home to our nation’s largest remaining tracts of wilderness. For many people, wolves are iconic—symbols of what was lost when the West was tamed, and harbingers of a hoped-for restoration of one of the world’s last great wildernesses. Of course, for the descendants of the people who eliminated wolves from the West, they represent something else entirely.

Q) At its core, American Wolf depicts a war of American ideals. Some characters embody a ruggedly masculine brand of independence—a drive to conquer an untamed landscape. And there are other characters championing conservation, an American tradition that dates back to the 19th century. How do these two ideals complement one another? How are they at odds?
A) Hunters in the Rockies would reject the notion that a Westerner has to fall in one camp or the other. Elk-hunting associations have devoted considerable resources to preserving habitat for their favorite animal, ensuring the long-term viability of the herds and benefitting other species as well. Likewise, many wolf advocates, including Yellowstone biologists, hunt elk every fall. Still, wolf reintroduction posits a classic clash of values. Wolves—and, more broadly, balanced ecosystems—are not “useful” in the same sense as a herd of elk that provides a living for a hunting guide, or a parcel of national forest that is leased for cattle grazing.

Q) How does O-Six, the compelling female alpha who anchors the story, fit in with our archetypes of self-made, charismatic American heroes?
A) Any wolf’s life would make a wonderful adventure story, if we only knew the details of her day-to-day existence. Ordinarily we wouldn’t, and that’s what made O-Six’s story so intriguing to me: it’s the saga of a wild animal whose life was as carefully observed and documented as an animal in a zoo. Her story is undeniably dramatic, but there is something else appealing about wolves as characters—the complexity of their social interactions sets them apart in the animal world. They are more like us than they first appear to be, and this makes their struggles seem both familiar and timeless.

Q) What was the biggest challenge in reporting this book? Was everyone willing to participate, or did you meet some resistance?
A) The broad outlines of O-Six’s life were widely available, but I wanted to tell her story as though she were a character in a novel, which could only be done by culling details from the thousands of pages of notes taken by Yellowstone’s small cadre of hyper dedicated wolf-watchers. Turning those notes over to a relative stranger—with no control over how they would be used—was an act of trust for which I am very grateful. I also wanted to make sure I included the perspective of a hunter, so that readers could understand the issue in all its complexity. After the worldwide backlash against the Minnesota dentist who killed Cecil, Zimbabwe’s most celebrated lion, this was a fraught request. Again, I relied on trust—in this case that his story would be relayed with dignity and respect.


Q) Every character in American Wolf is, in some way, fighting to survive and to protect their way of life. Which way of life do you think will win out? How do those fights fit into our current political climate?
A) In the twenty years since reintroduction, ranchers have gradually accommodated themselves to the idea that wolves are back to stay, though most would like to see fewer of them. Losses to wolves, while significant on a few ranches close to the core reintroduction areas, have not had a major impact on the livestock industry in the Northern Rockies as a whole. Likewise elk numbers are down in a few areas, but the overall health of the hunting business is good. Still, state politicians are determined to drive wolf numbers lower through long hunting and trapping seasons; opposing wolves—and, by proxy, federal government overreach—has become good politics. Wolf advocates, meanwhile, have not given up hope on returning wolves to the endangered species list, and we can expect more lawsuits in the years to come.

Q) Land use battles in the West have been well publicized—and everyone in your book (including the wolves) is fighting over territory and over the right to say what that land is for. What is the role of nature in our lives? Should we bend the natural environment to meet our needs, or is our job as stewards to maintain as small an imprint as possible?
A) Most public land in the West is still managed with resource extraction as the preeminent goal, though it does seem like we are headed, however gradually, toward a new paradigm. Some traditional uses—grazing cattle in the national forests, for example—look increasingly anachronistic in an era when restoring ecosystems has become a paramount goal for agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The national parks, meanwhile, have never been more popular, as more and more families choose to spend their holidays outdoors. The future of this struggle may depend in part on whether newcomers to the northern Rockies (still one of the least populated regions of the country) bring with them a new conservation ethic—one centered on eco-tourism, for example, rather than hunting—and how long it takes that change to be reflected in the officials they send to Washington.
 
 

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