"The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you." In this astonishing classic, Barry Lopez draws upon an impressive range of natural history, scientific fieldwork, and traditional folklore—along with his own personal experience living among captive and free-ranging wolves—to reveal the curious, controversial nature of Canis lupus . Now with a new preface by bestselling author Nate Blakeslee, Of Wolves and Men is wildlife literature at its finest. "The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you." So Barry Lopez writes in his first major work of nonfiction, a careful study of the way that wolves and humans have interacted over centuries, and the way that the wolf has become so central to our thinking about animals. Drawing on considerable personal experience with wolves and on an astonishing range of literature, Lopez argues for the necessity of wolves in the world, which would be much poorer without their howl. Thanks in part to the influence of this essential book about Canis lupus , first published in 1978, we know a great deal more about wolves and are all the better prepared to assure their protection. "Haunting . . . has something of value to say to all of us." —The Boston Globe "A wealth of observation, mythology and mysticism . . . that adds a colorful part to the still-unfinished mosaic that defines the wolf." —The New York Times Book Review "Biologically absorbing and humanly rich . . . should be read by every ecologically concerned American." —John Fowle "Not only the best popular account of an animal I have read in a long time but also something new—a bridge between books of the past and those of the future, which, it is hoped, will incorporate and expand the perceptions so eloquently treated here." —George Schaller "[Lopez’s] patient effort to understand a despised, feared, and heavily mythologized beast induces a shiver of strangeness, the sign of fresh, original work." —Newsweek Barry Lopez (1945–2020) was the author of three collections of essays, including Horizon ; several story collections; Arctic Dreams , for which he received the National Book Award; Of Wolves and Men , a National Book Award finalist; and Crow and Weasel , a novella-length fable. He contributed regularly to both American and foreign journals and traveled to more than seventy countries to conduct research. He was the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Lannan, and National Science Foundations and was honored by a number of institutions for his literary, humanitarian, and environmental work. Nate Blakeslee is a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly in Austin. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller American Wolf. Chapter One ORIGIN AND DESCRIPTION Imagine a wolf moving through the northern woods. The movement, over a trail he has traversed many times before, is distinctive, unlike that of a cougar or a bear, yet he appears, if you are watching, sometimes catlike or bearlike. It is purposeful, deliberate movement. Occasionally the rhythm is broken by the wolf's pause to inspect a scent mark, or a move off the trail to paw among stones where a year before he had cached meat. The movement down the trail would seem relentless if it did not appear so effortless. The wolf's body, from neck to hips, appears to float over the long, almost spindly legs and the flicker of wrists, a bicycling drift through the trees, reminiscent of the movement of water or of shadows. The wolf is three years old. A male. He is of the subspecies occidentalis, and the trees he is moving among are spruce and subalpine fir on the eastern slope of the Rockies in northern Canada. He is light gray; that is, there are more blond and white hairs mixed with gray in the saddle of fur that covers his shoulders and extends down his spine than there are black and brown. But there are silver and even red hairs mixed in, too. It is early September, an easy time of year, and he has not seen the other wolves in his pack for three or four days. He has heard no howls, but he knows the others are about, in ones and twos like himself. It is not a time of year for much howling. It is an easy time. The weather is pleasant. Moose are fat. Suddenly the wolf stops in mid-stride. A moment, then his feet slowly come alongside each other. He is staring into the grass. His ears are rammed forward, stiff. His back arches and he rears up and pounces like a cat. A deer mouse is pinned between his forepaws. Eaten. The wolf drifts on. He approaches a trail crossing, an undistinguished crossroads. His movement is now slower and he sniffs the air as though aware of a possibility for scents. He sniffs a scent post, a scrawny blueberry bush in use for years, and goes on. The wolf weighs ninety-four pounds and stands thirty inches at the shoulder. His feet are enormous, leaving prints in the mud along a creek (