"An informative review of the world's bears (including black bears, grizzlies, polar bears and giant pandas) reveals bear behavior and biology, past and present mythologies, plus modern day perceptions and human-bear coexisting issues; complete with numerous photos, illustrations and trivia"--Provided by publisher.

A joyous and important collection of letters between two great American writers and old friends, baring their hearts to each other about life, work, and the American scene. When two jazz musicians trade twelves with each other in a jam session, one musician begins by riffing off twelve bars of music, the other musician throws the twelve bars back through his instrument, the first answers, and so on, back and forth, in an ecstatic exchange of ideas and emotions. So it is with these letters, joyful music created by the exchanges between two dear friends. Reading these letters, you sense that each man was the other's lifeline, that the emotional and intellectual companionship they found in each other was unique in their lives. They spill it all out here--their struggles, frustrations, ambitions, fears; thoughts on literary gossip, jazz, photography--and the result is literary history, and a book that reminds you what friendship is all about.

Lee Summers Whipple-Haslam was the daughter of Franklin Summers, who came to California from Missouri in 1850 and mined enough gold at Shaw's Flat (near Sonora) to return east and bring his family west in 1852. Early days in California (1925?) chronicles her life in Shaw's Flat, Sonora, and other Tuolumne County communities, 1852-53; and the family's new home on Turnback Creek in Tuolumne's "East Belt" of minefields, 1854-60. There her mother kept a boardinghouse while her husband prospected, and their guests included Mark Twain. The author reminisces of neighbors at the camp, Native Americans and miners alike. A contemporary reviewer in 1923 commented that the reminiscences were "colored by time and approaching fiction."