Bear with Me

A Cultural History of Famous Bears in America

By: Daniel Horowitz

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Hardcover | 19 August 2025

At a Glance

Hardcover
296 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24

Hardcover

$311.99

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From teddy bears and Winnie-the-Pooh to Smokey Bear, Yogi Bear, and Cocaine Bear, American popular culture has been fascinated with real and fictional bears for more than two centuries. Bears are ubiquitous, appearing in advertisements, as logos for sports teams, and as central characters in children's books, cartoons, movies, and video games. In Bear With Me, Daniel Horowitz presents a vibrant history of the pedestrian and celebrity bears who have captured our imaginations and infiltrated our everyday lives. He shows that bears' ability to represent and evoke both terror and comfort makes them well-suited for their omnipresence. Today, cultural depictions of bears largely encompass examples of human-bear relationships, reciprocity, and emotional engagement. Reminders that climate change threatens the lives of polar bears engender feelings of empathy, while news of bear attacks drives us to fascinated fear. Whether examining the subculture of gay bears or the deadly consequences of anthropomorphizing animals, Horowitz charts the complexities and depth of American culture's unique and enduring relationship with bears.

Industry Reviews

"Bear With Me is a fascinating and deeply meditative two-hundred-year cultural history of America's popular obsession with bears. Analyzing an impressive range of folklore, live entertainments, literature, film, toys, cartoons, television, posters, social movements, and social media, the distinguished historian Daniel Horowitz forcefully places bears-representational and real-at the center of the American experience." - Janet M. Davis, author of The Gospel of Kindness: Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America "In this eye-popping survey of bears in American culture from the colonial period to the present, Daniel Horowitz tackles an enormous subject with a passion and a curiosity that proves contagious. Bears entered American culture in droves and under many disguises. Horowitz has the audacity to embrace their complexity rather than explain it away." - Jon T. Coleman, author of Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation

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