Reviewed by Gail Picco: In What Bears Teach Us, Sarah Elmeligi explains where bears live, how they live, how they learn and what brings them pleasure (scratching is involved). “Every moment of every day, a bear makes a decision based on its learning or the present circumstances and its estimation of what may happen next.” Elmeligi’s encounters with individual bears tell us more than we can imagine we might know, and after reading the book and lingering over its photos, we do learn a lot, about ourselves and about bears—all without leaving the couch. She’s generous and lays down the framework of a true co-existence between humans and our animal cousins.