THE COMPANY OF WOLVES by Peter...

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES by Peter Steinhart, illustrated by Alan James Robinson (Vintage: $14, 374 pp.). Among the most controversial animals in North America, wolves have been damned as murderous vermin and praised as the embodiment of wildness. In his examination of the responses wolves elicit, Steinhart argues, “We are drawn to wolves because no other animal is so much like us. Of all the rest of creation, wolves reflect our own images back to us most dramatically, most clearly and most intensely.”

Intelligent and highly socialized, wolves have managed to survive, although poison, traps and hunters have exterminated them in some states. As wolves reenter those states from Canada or are reintroduced by biologists, they are certain to remain the subject of often bitter controversy.