Gibson, Nancy. Wolves. 1996. 72p. index. illus. Voyageur, paper, $14.95 (0-89658-299-X). DDC: 599.74.

Hampton, Bruce. The Great American Wolf. Jan. 1997. 400p. index. illus. Holt, $29.50 (0-8050-3716-0). DDC: 599.74.

Phillips, Michael K. and Smith, Douglas W. The Wolves of Yellowstone. Dec. 1996. 112p. index. illus. Voyageur, $24.95 (0-89658-330-9). DDC: 599.74.

The Yellowstone Wolf: A Guide & Sourcebook. Ed. by Paul Schullery. 1996. 366p. index. illus. High Plains, $32.50 (1-881019-13-6). DDC: 599.74.

These titles appeal to ascending gradations of interest in canis lupus: pure pictorial (Ballantine and Dutcher); introductory (Gibson); comprehensive (Hampton); reverent (Phillips and Smith); and intense (Schullery).

For those attracted to full-page spreads of howling wolves, playful pups, and packs in fang-bared snarl, Sawtooth Wolves provides a visual spectacular. It's a spin-off from photographer Dutcher's nature film, Wolf, which he claims 200 million people have seen. Dutcher and his crew, along with text writer and project director Ballantine, observed and filmed the behavior of a pack that Dutcher raised in a 25-acre enclosure in Idaho over a six-year period. Habituated to his crew's presence, the wolves tolerated close human approach, resulting in unusually dynamic photography, especially evident in the illustrations of pack hierarchy. An entrancing entree to the world of the wolf.

Gibson, an environmentalist, gives basic information about the various wolf subspecies around the world: their size, weight, territorial range. About 50 color photographs illustrate the color and physical variations among them. However, her text predominantly concerns the North American gray wolf; Gibson surveys its evolutionary antecedents, its behavior, and the extermination campaign against it. Ending with an account of the reintroduction program gives younger readers needing book-report facts a solid start in the subject.

Hampton is a skilled writer (Children of Grace: The Nez PerceWar of 1877, 1994) who offers another class narrative. This one covers four centuries of human animosity toward the North American wolf, from observations of the predator at Jamestown up through the intense opposition from ranchers to reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone Park. Whatever accounts for such abiding enmity, Hampton goes very far toward explaining it. The hatred is inspired, naturally, by depredations of wolves on stock animals but is also moderated by our fascination with the wolf as a highly intelligent predator. The Native American tribes held strong beliefs about the wolf, to which Hampton devotes one excellent chapter encompassing creation legends centering on wolves and adaptation of the wolves' natural behavior to the hunting and warfare techniques of certain tribes. To the whites, though, the wolf was not to be emulated, but extirpated, a campaign whose nearly successful course Hampton ably chronicles.

Phillips and Smith were the restoration leaders of the Yellowstone Gray Wolf Recovery project, initiated with the first shipment of wolves in January 1995 and the last in early 1996. They provide an interesting account of the operation of the project, which includes interviews with or essays by other members of the team and descriptions of the wolves and what happened to them (a wolf Phillips particularly admired was killed by poachers). The Phillips and Smith complements the Schullery nicely.

For the wolfologist to whom pretty pictures are simply not enough, Schullery has assembled research material that grew out of the preparation to put wolves back into Yellowstone Park. Some papers are scientific, some are legal, and most are for seriously interested readers to whom the phrase "environmental impact statement" portends exciting prose ahead. Perhaps of most interest to regional libraries, this anthology concludes with reports and graphs tracking the movements of the park's new residents. --Gilbert Taylor