It’s a tad disappointing that this book was on my TBR list for eight years, and now that I finally got a chance to read it, I just wasn’t that awestruck. It’s another photograph-heavy coffee-table sized book, companion to The Hidden Life of Wolves. (I thought at first this one had been published later, but actually it came first). The project it was based on is described in Wolves At Our Door. Having already read those other two books, this one offers very little new or different info. It’s actually somewhat repetitive inside its own pages. There’s parts that describe (briefly) the filming project, the social structure of the wolf pack, their hunting skills and involved care of the young. There’s very little narrative of actual incidents- but two stand out to my mind in particular: the wolves’ reaction when a raven died, and how they were observed eating flowers (shooting stars) in a field, every spring (but nobody was sure why). Everything else was nice- but for me, not much more than that. The photographs really are beautiful and expressive, but also a bit grainy, not with the clarity of focus or printing as nowadays. For it’s time this is a gorgeous book, but I can’t help comparing it to other things I’ve read before that were written since, and it doesn’t stand up as excellent in that regard. All that said, I am holding onto it!
What I really want is to see the films these authors have produced- about wolves, and cougars. Haven’t been able to find them available anywhere (aside from buying my own dvd that is).
