In the Company of Pandas: My Life with the World's Favorite Bear

Spend time in the company of giant pandas with this delightful collection of stories and first-person insights about their behavior, biology, and conservation from panda expert Dr. Brandie Smith, director of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.

What is it about giant pandas that makes them nearly impossible to resist? Brandie Smith, director of the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, DC, and a true expert in giant pandas, gives readers a front-row seat to these miracles of nature, these bamboo-devouring carnivores, describing what it’s like to feed them, train them, cherish them, and help them survive.

Pandas, like people, have strong individual personalities, quirks, habits, likes, and dislikes. Through Smith’s eyes, we get to meet several generations of pandas who have called the National Zoo home. Smith addresses many misconceptions about giant pandas, revealing surprising truths about their biology, evolution, and the challenges involved with taking care of them. Giant pandas have a unique reproductive style that has worked perfectly for millions of years in the wild but has made it challenging for them to respond to climate change and habitat destruction, and makes propagating them in zoos extremely difficult.

With chapters on raising baby pandas, the diplomacy involved in exchanging pandas with China, and the ongoing quest to keep giant pandas from going extinct, In the Company of Pandas is the ultimate guide to these irresistible creatures and why we love them, written by one of the world’s leading experts.