Grizzly Years: In Search of the American Wilderness

For nearly twenty years, alone and unarmed, author Doug Peacock traversed the rugged mountains of Montana and Wyoming tracking the magnificent grizzly. His thrilling narrative takes us into the bear's habitat, where we observe directly this majestic animal's behavior, from hunting strategies, mating patterns, and denning habits to social hierarchy and methods of communication. As Peacock tracks the bears, his story turns into a thrilling narrative about the breaking down of suspicion between man and beast in the wild.

“Doug Peacock has written about his grizzly bears with a passionate and unguarded heart. Grizzly Years is ultimately a love story about a man who returns from war shorn of his soul, and recovers his soul through his efforts to study and protect the grandest predator on earth, Ursus horribilis. I cannot imagine that a more worthwhile book will be printed this year.”

—Jim Harrison, author of “Legends of the Fall”

Walking It Off: A Veteran’s Chronicle of War and Wilderness

Grappling with the death of his friend Edward Abbey and an enduring case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Peacock walks the deserts of the American southwest, the valleys of Nepal, the mountains of the Northern Rockies, and the Central Highlands of Vietnam in an epic story of a soldier forever seeking home.

“Peacock is a direct literary descendant of Thoreau, with a few genes from Audubon and his mentor, Edward Abbey. . . His response to the natural world is visceral, intellectual and spiritual at the same time. In this book, he writes about it beautifully, in prose that begs comparison to the best of Peter Matthiessen. . . His meditations on war and wilderness are painfully apt today, with America fighting new battles abroad, led by an administration that seems to be at war with wilderness at home.”

—Phil Caputo

Pulitzer Prize winner for A Rumor of War

In the Presence of Grizzlies (Originally published as, The Essential Grizzly: The Mingled Fates of Men and Bears)

Winner of ForeWord Magazine's 2006 Gold Award for Nature Book of the Year

The most comprehensive and compelling chronicle of human–grizzly-bear interactions ever written, In the Presence of Grizzlies (formerly published as The Essential Grizzly) examines the fragile bond between ourselves and the quintessential alpha predator.

“This is the finest kind of writing about the natural world, where the authors are able to shed their own egos and build a deeply moving, deeply real account of what our world must feel like to its wildest inhabitants. The grizzly is essential, and so is this book.”

—Bill McKibben

Author, climate activist

In the Shadow of the Sabertooth: Global Warming, the Origins of the First Americans and the Terrible Beasts of the Pleistocene

2014 High Plains Book Award winner for Medicine & Science
In this new, substantially revised edition, famed wilderness defender Doug Peacock gives the reader a profoundly new look at Ice Age global warming in North America, its effects on human colonization, extinction of the great American megafauna and the crucial survival lessons that can be applied to our rapidly changing climate.

“Doug Peacock is an iconic figure, a secular prophet, in the wildass American West. His voice is important, angry, humane and unique.”

—David Quammen

Award-winning science writer

Was It Worth It?: A Wilderness Warrior’s Long Trail Home

Winner of the 2022 National Outdoor Book Award for Nonfiction
In a collection of gripping stories of adventure, bestselling author Doug Peacock – loner, iconoclast, environmentalist, and contemporary of Edward Abbey – reflects on a life lived in the wild, considering the question many ask in their twilight years: “Was It Worth It?”

“There’s a reason that Doug Peacock is a living legend on America’s environmental battlefront. He fights – and writes – with unmatched passion.”

—Carl Hiaasen

Bestselling author