That was an excellent book! It's more of a description of our park service and the American mind than a book about a bear attack. The actual attack was a very small part of the book. I knew that going in and was not disappointed.

I read this book for two reasons:

1. This was one of the first adult books I read as a child (I was probably around 9 or 10 when I read it) and I wanted to see if I remembered any of it at all. I didn't. The knowledge of having read it stayed with me though.

2. I was genuinely curious about why those two attacks happened. Brown and black bears are generally human averse and attacks are not common, even now when humans are nearly as common as ants and taking over every bit of the earth. The book did a grand job explaining it. It neither laid all of the responsibility on humans, nor did it blame the attack on bear aggression. It explained how and why it happened in the words of the people who investigated it and those who experienced the events surrounding the two attacks.

Most of the book explains the events leading to the attacks. The event itself is quite short. Both attacks took minutes and this is reflected in the book. The aftermath is short because it isn't over. It still isn't over. We're still feeling the aftermath today.

Thankfully, one of his predictions turned out very wrong. Humans protected the Grizzly Bear and allowed the population to grow. Ditto with the bison population, which is important to the brown bear. We learned from our mistakes. Well, most of them. We're still crowding out wild animals with our vast human population. ( )

Up through the middle of the 20th century, as the frontier of the American West became more and more crowded with humans, the mighty grizzly bear population found its safe spaces dwindling to smaller and smaller enclaves. This led to increasing numbers of close encounters between people and the bears believed to be averse to human contact. Still, no one had ever been killed by a grizzly in the U.S. — until 1967, when two women were killed by two different grizzlies on the same night inside Glacier National Park in Montana. What provoked the bears to attack? And why did the National Park Service ignore a multitude of warnings all that summer that human-bear interactions were reaching dangerous levels?

Olsen tries to answer those questions with this account, though he comes up a bit short on final conclusions. And given that the book was first published in 1969, his pessimistic conclusion that the killings were the beginning of the end for the grizzly bear in North America proved to be premature. In fact, the population rebounded after being listed on the Endangered Species List in 1975 and has now recovered to the point where some of the restrictions on hunting and killing grizzlies are being lifted. By sheer coincidence, I heard a story about this very topic this morning on NPR: Grizzlies Have Recovered, Officials Say; Now Montanans Have to Get Along With Them.

Despite the ways in which Olsen's account is outdated, it's still worth reading for the descriptions of the beauty of Glacier NP and the magnificence of the grizzly bear. It's clear that Olsen, while not quite condoning the grizzly attacks (though it's clear he places the majority of the blame on the NPS), is on the side of Ursus horribilis when it comes to deserving a corner of the planet where they can live without human interference. ( )

This book was originally given to me when I was living in Montana, roughly three hours away from Glacier Park. During the time I was living there I had heard of a few grizzly encounters, most occurring amongst my friends who were camping during the late summer and the like. No one I knew personally had been harmed by them - but a few had been treed. I was lucky enough to see one in person, about ten years from me, in Yellowstone Park before I returned to the east coast. Well, I feel a bit better for having read this book after I got back from the West.

The book was informative, to say the least. Olsen has a habit of overexplaining some details, but the information still is interesting to hear. I feel as if I learned a great deal more about the park than I expected to - and the wealth of information extended even into the flora, something I never expected the book to go into long explanations of.

It's been said before, and bears repeating, that the park service reacted horribly to the information of rogue grizzlies. What bothered me most about the book, however, was the rather pessimistic view that Olsen took in the epilogue. I think he would be rather shocked today to learn how well the grizzlies are doing.. ( )

A first-rate account of an horrific occurrence, from one of America's finest non-fiction writers. On August 12, 1967, two separate attacks by grizzly bears in Glacier National Park resulted in two deaths. Olsen tells us step-by-step of the days and events that led up to the attacks, and moment-by-moment of their aftermath. Never flinching from details, neither does he flinch from assigning blame where it inevitably points -- and the much-needed changes that these tragedies precipitated. ( )

Over the course of U.S. history, the grizzly bear’s environment has been steadily encroached upon by man, the grizzly’s only enemy. Once roaming over the Great Plains and mountains of the western United States, they have retreated to the few remaining wilderness areas that afford them sufficient food. Still, they remain solitary and typically avoid humans. In this nonfiction work, Olsen explores the events that culminated in one night of terror in August 1967 when two young women were savagely attacked by grizzly bears.

I love reading ‘true crime’ and this work has all the hallmarks of the best of that genre. Olsen gives us an explanation and history of the various parties involved – park rangers, temporary concessionaire employees, casual hikers, physicians, birders, families, older couples, exuberant teenagers, and long-term residents. He also recounts the unusual number of bear sightings in Glacier National Park during the summer of 1967, and even more unusual number of “encounters” between bears and humans.

It’s important to remember that this was set in an era before cell phones or other forms of instant communication we are so used to today. I applaud the courage of the rangers and hikers who went to the aid of those attacked. I don’t know if I would have ventured out into the night to investigate the screams. Olsen doesn’t shy from exposing bureaucratic inefficiency, nor the fault of “tourists” who fail to understand the real dangers of a wild environment.

The pace is unrelenting and the tension builds to an unendurable pitch. I reluctantly stopped reading because it was after midnight and I couldn’t keep my eyes open much longer. I should have stopped an hour earlier, or just kept going until I finished. Even though I live in a decidedly suburban area, in a secure home and without any evidence of any type of bear within 500 miles, every slight noise fueled my imagination, and I had a fretful night and little sleep.
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