Nate Blakeslee has created more than a moving tribute to Yellowstone wolves. American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West (Crown 2017; $28) is truly a crossover genre, science with a human face. Or, should I say, a genuinely intelligent book that connects man and beast in a way that is evocative of what Harvard’s E. O. Wilson calls “Biophilia”.
I read this outstanding volume after reading an utterly vacuous and didactic animal book, so I was
predisposed to expect it to be a soppy, sentimental and anthropomorphic look at Canis Lupus. Mercifully, it is not.
American Wolf has beauty as well as brains. And it pierces the heart only after skillfully penetrating the neocortex. I recommend it, without reservation.
Shelf Life 