Reviews with content warning for Animal death - A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear

Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

22 reviews

natrix's review against another edition

Go to review page

informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

Content Warnings

tiggum's review

Go to review page

slow-paced

I HATE this book. I'm absolutely certain that a really good book could have been written about these events and circumstances, so it's an absolute tragedy that this one was instead.

This book lacks any kind of structure or coherence. It jumps forward and backward through time, between different topics and narratives, from person to person, seemingly without rhyme or reason. It is impossible to follow any sequence, keep track of any individual, or place any event in time. The book reads like it was cut into pieces and pasted back together random.

The author injects his opinions and prejudices into the book frequently and obnoxiously, and makes no distinction between established fact and wild conjecture. The most egregious example is the entire chapter about Charles Nicolle's research in the early twentieth century leading to Hongoltz-Hetling's completely baseless theory that Toxoplasma gondii may be responsible, to some unspecified degree, for the behaviour of some or all of the bears and humans involved. It's pure speculation but presented almost as fact.

And each chapter begins with a quotation about bears, or that mentions bears, or that just has the word "bear" in it. These quotations don't relate to the subject of the chapter, nor to anything else that I could see. They're just there because the author liked them, I guess.

This book is infuriatingly bad. It should not exist.

Content Warnings

inferiorwit's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark funny informative tense fast-paced

5.0

Content Warnings

aegireads's review

Go to review page

dark funny informative medium-paced

4.0

Content Warnings

goosegrimm's review

Go to review page

challenging dark funny informative reflective tense medium-paced

3.25

An interesting look into America's First Free Town, a libertarian political project that colonizes the New Hampshire town of Grafton. This book is more like a drive by in my opinion; Hongoltz-Hetling does a remarkable job creating relationships with many facets of the Grafton community and goes into depth about the history of the town (and of new england bears). However, I do think he could have gone more in depth into the meat of the Libertarian political movement. Its a complex, sprawling group, with apparently a genuine impact developing on the New Hampshire government. I would have appreciated more time spent unraveling the justifications Libertarians hold with unraveling laws and civic responsibility. Otherwise, Hongoltz-Hetling's dry wit and open engagement with the Grafton community was a welcome perspective into a dying town. As someone from a similarly tiny and resource strapped community, I appreciated the care evident in his writing. Plus, the bear discussions were very interesting and not at all what I expected. Overall, I would not really read this as a political book. While politics certainly plays a role, I think the book works a lot better as a window into rural life. And a very interesting commentary of how life works when you are surrounded by bears and all on your own, whether by choice or by circumstance.

Content Warnings