Customer Reviews

Search for the Golden Moon Bear: Science and Adventure in Pursuit of a New Species

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Sy Montgomery has written another of her enchanting books about animals. Who would ever believe that trying to chase down the geneology of a bear could lead to such excitement? It's trite to say,"It's a thrill a minute!" but that is the feeling as Sy tears across Cambodia where nobody goes because the whole damn place is covered with land mines. One good thing comes from this in that people have stopped denuding the forest in order to keep both legs on their bodies. Sy tells us that one in 236 Cambodians is an amputee from the land mines. If you were fortunate enough to hear Sy review her book at various venues around the country, you got to see fascinating and sometimes gruesome slides as she takes us on her magic carpet. Sy is magical when she starts writing about her beloved natural world, as thousands know from reading her columns in the Boston Globe.

If you didn't make it to Sy's book review, you will be delighted to know that the slides are included in the beautifully illustrated book.

Here is a writer who is meticulous in the accuracy of her writing but still thrills us with her enthusiasm for the subject. If you only read one book this year, it has to be SEARCH FOR THE GOLDEN MOON BEAR. It's a shame that I can't give it more than Five Stars. What the heck, I give it Six Stars. So shoot me Amazon.com!

As a fellow "naturalist-author," I've long been an admirer of Sy Montgomery's work - no matter which jungle this diminutive, intrepid, high-spirited lady is leading a reader through. She's introduced me to great apes in Africa, man-eating tigers in India, pink dolphins in the Amazon. Her latest "Search for the Golden Moon Bear" is, I think, her most ambitious and perilous quest yet.
It's also Sy's most heart-wrenching. For these marvelous, previously-unknown creatures of Southeast Asia are visible, for the most part, only in cages where they've been penned. Sy's pursuit of the golden moon bear is in the company of scientist Gary Galbreath. I don't want to give away her many adventures, but suffice that Cambodia and Laos today remain places not to be visited by the faint of heart.
Which is one thing Sy Montgomery can never be accused of being. Her descriptive prose of animals and landscapes is right up there with the best of contemporary nature writers. Her latest book is also an eloquent plea for conservation of the endangered species whose various organs and body parts are tragically finding their way into dozens of "traditional medicine" marketplaces. As she writes of the golden moon bear, "You look into her eyes as you would look at the stars, their light crossing eons, alien, eternal and mute."
If you read only one wildlife adventure book this season, make it this one!

Search for the Golden Moon Bear is a wild ride! Montgomery takes us through unexplored jungles, war-torn Cambodia, bomb-strewn Laos, and corrupt Thailand to meet some of the most bizarre and beautiful creatures on earth in search of what could prove to be a new species. I won't give away the ending, but it's not what you (nor Montgomery and her scientist-companion Northwestern biologist Gary Galbreath) expect!
This book has everything: travel, mystery, science, and gorgeous pictures (the first ever published in the Western hemisphere) of a bear previously unknown to science. But it is about so much more than bears, and so much more than science.
Those who don't understand animals might criticize Montgomery for anthropomorphizing the creatures about whom she writes. But this is one of those rare books that combines science, story and spirit--as truth usually does. Search for the Golden Moon Bear is a book full of surprising truths. Although it takes place in a former war zone, this is a book full of hope--as well as humor. It is a testament to the glorious fact that great discoveries still await us in the new century. If you care about science, adventure, travel or animals, this is the book for you--read and rejoice!
--A reader from California

Whether she is "Walking with the Great Apes," canoeing the Sundarbans for tigers, or, in this case, exploring Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos seeking the golden moon bear, Sy Montgomery single-mindedly seeks out rare animals, refusing to limit her searches to "safe" areas. Facing land-mines in Cambodia, warring tribes of "drug-selling headhunters" on the Thai border with Myanmar (Burma), poachers in Laos, and a poverty-stricken Laotian society in which people eat virtually all insect and animal life (including bats, rats, and animal placentas), Montgomery attempts to track down a golden bear with Mickey-Mouse-type ears and a black mane, thought to be a variety of moon bear, and unlike any other bear known to science, possibly "the scientific finding of a lifetime."

Frustrated by a search in which all the animals she seeks are found in cages in the city or living, confined, in remote refuges and zoos, Montgomery tries to identify and find the bears' native habitats, describing the bears' importance in local culture and the myths and legends which have grown up around them. Through interviews with native wildlife experts, local tribes, and even Hmong refugees in Skokie, Illinois, she tries to capture their fading memories of bear types to see if there is, in fact, an unknown bear species.

A writer, rather than a hard scientist, Montgomery is often lyrical in her descriptions, romantic (some would say excessively so) in her observations and imagery: "Emerging from the deathly still of hibernation, out of gravelike dens, bears rise, Christlike from the dead." She tends to anthropomorphize her subjects--a bear "reminded me of a street waif," a civet "stared at us defiantly," and a pleated gibbon was "stunned and hopeless." Overcome by emotion at one point, she enters a cage of bears at feeding time because she "wanted to make them an offering, to be part of an exchange of food for blessing."

Less clearly focused and concentrated than her other books, Search for the Golden Moon Bear becomes less a search than a travelogue by the midpoint of Montgomery's book, as she and the scientists and aides who accompany her continue their explorations into remote and dangerous areas of southeast Asia. Montgomery fans will undoubtedly find this latest adventure fascinating, despite its disappointing conclusions and ominous implications for the future. Mary Whipple

I would say half of this book is on bears, half on journeys throughout Southeast Asia. This suited me find since I love both topics. Montgomery deals with both well, and explains both the wildlife trade and scientific concepts in clear language. I also like how she does not reveal the conclusion of the search until the end, allowing for a suspensful read. I have to admit, I have read many books about environmental issues in Southeast Asia, but was surprised by a lot in this book (including the extent of keeping bears in hotels in Phnom Penh). A great story of discovery in Southeast Asia.

Take a bumpy ride on a motorcycle through the Southeast Asian jungles as Sy Montgomery takes you by the hand on another journey to find a bear we normal folk have never heard of before as she and Professor Gary J. Galbreath go in...... Search for The Golden Moon Bear: Science and Adventure in Pursuit of a New Species. Beware of the perils that await you of armed gunmen, if you don't follow the spiritual lemmings into the roadside Temple to pray for your safe passage before entering the jungle...just in case! The most adventurous and spell-binding of any Montgomery titles, it will keep you on the edge of your seat as you follow her and Galbreath through this heart stopping, teeth clenching, anger inducing, wild action adventure with a lot of science, a bit of local flavor, a touch of history and some humor thrown in for good measure as only Montgomery can do. Get your passport out, take your shoes off and be prepared to be searched by airport security, because after you read this book, you will be a Tree Hugger-conservationist for life! Like Journey of the Pink Dolphins: An Amazon Quest and The Good Good Pig:The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood, this is another must have Sy Montgomery book for your library collection!

Another great book by Sy Montgomery, a gifted natural history and travel writer. In this work she focuses on her search for a new animal, officially unknown to science, the golden moon bear. Is it a color phase of a known bear, the normally black moon bear? Or perhaps a subspecies of it? Or even a new species altogether, the first new bear species to be described in almost a century? Accompanied by the gifted American biologist Dr. Gary J. Galbreath and Sun Hean, a young and promising Cambodian conservationist, they search throughout Southeast Asia for evidence and accounts of the elusive golden moon bear. Traveling all through Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, from illegal back alley markets selling endangered species parts to remote forest reserves threatened by encroaching refugees, illegal logging, and poachers to charity-run wildlife rehabiliation centers to dwindling primitive hill tribes vanishing in the face of approaching civilization, their time-honored wisdom of the ways of the forest dying with them, their quest is a long, wild, and sometimes dangerous one. Montgomery and her companions must face all manner of possible threats, from unexploded ordinance from the Vietnam War (Laos being one of the most bombed nations in world history) to concealed land mines deep in the jungle (a legacy of the Khmer Rouge, having left thousands of mines in Cambodia which frequently claim lives and limbs to this day) to warring hill tribes, opium growers, poachers, huge leeches, jungle illnesses; it would seem only their passion and thirst for knowledge kept them going.

This book has been described as a mystery, and rightly so. As they proceed down tangled jungle trails and even more tangled urban ones, the mystery deepens. Is there only one possible new species of bear haunting the rain forests and mountains of Southeast Asia or are there more? Locals in various areas speak of other new bear species, not matching descriptions of the golden moon bear, telling Montgomery and the others of "horse bears," "dog bears," "pig bears," and "man bears." Others speak of "honey bears" or huge compleletly black mountain bears, lacking the distinct markings of moon bears. Are these local variants of the two species of bears known to live in Southeast Asia, the sun bear and the moon bear? Perhaps they are new populations of more distant bear species, such as the brown bear and the sloth bear? Or do they represent altogether new species?
Not daunted by this but becoming even more enthusiastic they do their best to expand the frontiers of zoology and answer these questions.

The book focuses mainly on bears but other wildife is given some attention. Learn about the dholes, wild rare, red Asian dogs once venerated and protected by Laotian hill tribes. The Asian elephant, still revered by many in the region, particularly in Thailand; in Thai newspapers an elephant's age is always mentioned with his name, and honorific titles are bestowed, Pang for lady elephant, Pai for tuskers, and Sidor for tuskless males. The khting vor, an enigmatic animal first described in 1993, originally said to be a new type of wild ox, later a type of wild sheep or goat, an animal about which Montgomery makes some surprising revelations about.

However, more than the natural history of these animals Montgomery brings to readers their plight, that they are in danger of extinction. A rampant black market for animal parts, largely for medicinal purposes, threatens the very existence of some of Southeast Asia's more spectacular wildlife. Bears are captured and savagely and cruely harvested for their paws, made into soups which are more "powerful" if the animal is still alive when the paw is removed. Montgomery describes in heart-rending detail how animals are inhumanely abused and tortured in the region for the supposed exlirs and potions that they can produce, even when substitute are cheaply and easily avaiable through man-made sources.

Perhaps even worse than the market for animal parts is the simple extermination of animals for food. Montgomery describes nearly empty forests in Laos, where virtually every wild animal, from insect to civet to song bird to bat to bear and tiger are collected for the dinner table. Barrels full of smoked bats and empty caves, skewered songbirds and silent sunrises - and worse -are the result in a virtual wildlife holocaust.

As in other books by Sy Montgomery the book is a much a travelogue as a work of natural history. Particularly fascintating were her travels in remote, poorly known Laos, one of the most enigmatic nations in the world. A poor nation but rich in diversity - Laos posseses 240 ethnic groups and four ethnolinguistic families, ethnic minorities making up 70 percent of the population, and over 13,000 genetic varieties of rice are cultivated in the country, with only India, one hundred times the land area, having more - to me the book was worthwhile alone for educating me about this country. The book provides similiar interesting details on Cambodia and Thailand as well.

In closing I recommend this book highly. Does Montgomery get her bear(s)? Find out by reading the book. As often in science, the answers often lead to still more questions, and the book admitedly does not have a final, definitive answer on all the qestions raised. However, I think you will be greatly satisfied upon reading this great book.

When I first bought this book, I anticipated reading it with great pleasure, especially since I'd really enjoyed another book by this author, "Spell of the Tiger: The Man-Eaters of Sundarbans."

However, early on in the book, I came across a passage that bothered me. On pages 19-20, she describes how she "thrust her face" into the den of a hibernating black bear. Rather than including something in this section of the book about this kind of action not being something you should try at home, she talks about how "unafraid" she was. While that may be the case, writing something like that is irresponsible. How many people will read that and figure it is okay for them to try it? Duh! Just look at all the YouTube videos of stupid people who try to feed wild bears. And she implicitly encourages people to stick their heads into a bear's den???

While that may not be inaccurate, it is an error in judgement to write something like that.

Later on, she makes another mistake, albeit not a scientific one. On page 132, she writes about how Shuttong Vang describes how he fires his flintlock "like in `Gunsmoke!'" I know, it's just repeating what he says - but in the time of `Gunsmoke,' flintlocks had already been relegated to antique piles at least 50 years earlier. Ignoring that kind of detail drives me crazy.

But the real show-stopper for me came further down the page. While discussing species identification errors, the author writes, "Western ornithologists classified the male and female ecclectus (sp) parrot of South America as separate species because one is bright green and the other, bright red."

THIS IS HORRIBLY INACCURATE WRITING! Not only is "Eclectus" spelled incorrectly (at least in the version of the book I have), SHE PLACES THE SPECIES IN THE WRONG CONTINENTNT!! Eclectus parrots are Old World parrots, native to southeast ASIA - Indonesia, the Moluccas, New Guinea, etc. They are NOT found anywhere in the Americas.

For a renowned science writer to make this last kind of error is really inexcusable. Granted, it also slipped by an editor - but most book editors are generalists, not specialists, and most wouldn't question something like this (although I don't know how the spelling error was overlooked, by at least two people). Basic facts about where a species occurs in the wild are so simple to check, I really wonder how this made it into print in the 2002 edition of this book.

Because I'm very involved in parrot keeping and interested in parrot conservation, I probably know a bit more about parrots than the average person, many who might not have even noticed the error described above.

However, an error of that nature makes me question the accuracy of other writing by this author, who does have a reputation as a respectable science/natural history writer. If I discover an easily avoidable mistake like this, how many other mistakes have maybe been made in her books that I (or others) did NOT pick up on, simply because we don't know much about tigers, or apes or bears, or whatever animal she was writing about?

When I read all the glowing testimonials on the book's back dust jacket, I wonder how many of the people who supplied them, actually read the book cover-to-cover?

While I don't doubt the writer's passion for saving wild creatures, this inability to ascertain simple scientific facts - and species spelling -really colours everything she writes in a tone of decreased credibilty.

That is why there is no way I could rate this book any higher than I did.