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.

Daniel Horowitz is Mary Huggins Gamble Professor of American Studies, Emeritus, at Smith College and the author of many books, most recently, American Dreams, American Nightmares: Culture and Crisis in Residential Real Estate from the Great Recession to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Preface. Polar Bears, Franz Boas, and Me  ix
Introduction  1
1. Folkloric Bears and Actual Ones: Sacred and Profane from the Bible to Contemporary Celebrities  11
2. The Stories of Hugh Glass: The Case of a Disappearing and Reappearing Dangerous Bear  33
3. Out of Hibernation and Into Children’s Literature  47
4. Grizzly Adams: Bears He Tamed, Those He Displayed, and Those Responsible for His Death  75
5. Captive Bears and Their Captors as Workers  95
6. Teddy Bear: Another One Quickly Disappears and Frequently Reappears  129
7. Off the Poster and Out of the Zoo: Smokey Bear Goes Everywhere  149
8. Out of the Closet: Bears in the Gay World  167
9. Timothy Treadwell and Marian Engel: Bears, Humans, and Dangerous Eroticism  181
Coda. Precarity and Polar Bears  203
Acknowledgments  211
Notes  215
Select Bibliography  245
Index  261