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Title: The Arctic Wolf: Living With the Pack by David L. Mech, L. David Mech, Roger A. Caras ISBN: 0-89658-211-6 Publisher: Voyageur Press Pub. Date: October, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $72.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Possibly the best general-purpose book about wolves
Comment: David Mech is probably the world's foremost authority on wolves. He began publishing in the early 1960s and hasn't stopped since. This is one of his best general-readership books; it contains one-of-a-kind pictures and an easy, engaging account of the team's summer stay, literally among the wolves. Reminiscent of Farley Mowatt's "Never Cry Wolf," except that Mech came prepared, and didn't need to eat mice!

Well worth tracking down, "Living with the Wolves" is out-of-print, but happily, Mech has just published a ten-year followup! Look for "The arctic wolf: ten years with the pack", ISBN 0896583538, which Amazon now has.

This guy's been at it so long that there's even a book ABOUT him: "Wolfman: exploring the world of wolves", by Laurence Pringle, ISBN 068417832X. And for an excellent accompaniement to the book, view the National Geographic video "White Wolf", where you can see many of the same wolves you met in this book.

Rating: 4
Summary: Fantastic subject-matter, uninspiring style.
Comment: L. David Mech (NOT David L.) achieved something that most biologists could only dream about: he gained the trust of a wild pack of wolves on Ellesmere Island, in the high Arctic. You may have read the National Geographic article he wrote about it.
The book is more or less a filled-out version of the NG article. It's simply laid out and nicely presented with lots of photographs.
Most of the book concerns the pack's everyday activities and behaviour - socialising, hunting, feeding pups, and so on. There's some information on wolves in general, for people who are completely new to the subject. Mech also tries to describe the almost overwhelming emotion of making contact with the pack.

Mech has a scientist's style. His first priority is to make the text totally truthful, and his second is to make it clear and readable. He does very well on both points.
This scientific approach has a drawback: it's very difficult to write a 'hard' scientific book that still has the spark of delight in it. Like most people, Mech doesn't really have the knack. The main let-down is the way Mech sometimes explains the hard facts, gives a tiny, tantalising glimpse of the wolves' nature or personalities - and then changes the subject. I got the impression that he was leaving out some of the most fascinating insights, maybe because he couldn't back them up scientifically.

Still, it's a first-class introduction to the Arctic wolf. I recommend it.
And by the way, the photography is great. And Arctic wolf pups are very, very cute.