An Unbearable Bear Book

An entirely outlandish thought struck me as I read this book: it might have been written by a bear. The thought arose after perhaps the tenth mention of how the Church had made the bear “into a figure of ridicule,” removing this creature so admired by Northern Europeans as the primary symbol of Christ’s nobility. The notion stayed with me through a discussion of the teddy bear’s advent, which is one of the author’s few acknowledgements that history did not stop in the High Middle Ages.