In the author’s first book, From Moro to Bluff Creek—Part 1, published in 2014, the author shares an assemblage of unique Moro stories, all garnered while living at Moro, Texas, all the while observing how one decision or lack of decision seemed to have set a new experience into motion. In the author’s second book, Toyah Medicine Woman of Bluff Creek—Part 2, published in 2017, the author returns to Moro again—this time through the life of a Toyah Native American medicine woman who also lived at Moro, albeit some eight hundred years prior to the author, in prehistory. In his current book, The Bears of Moro—Part 3, the author focuses again on Moro while exploring the recent and prehistoric past while sharing more of the author’s unpublished experiences and bringing more depth to the story of the Toyah Native Americans, which brings us to the subject of bears. You the reader will learn that in the time of the Toyah, one thousand years ago, Moro had a thriving population of grizzly bears; and the Toyahs came to Moro to take these bears, in a rite of passage for aspiring want-to-be warriors. This book introduces new Moro stories, not previously published, yet experienced by the author and stories taken from small ledger books handwritten in the late 1800s about the Civil War by a neighborhood veteran of the Civil War, John Joseph Vernon. Vernon’s ledger books tell stories in his unique vernacular of his growing up in the 1850s and 1860s experiencing the horrors of a civil war and facing an even worse reconstruction. The author simply transcribes the stories from Vernon’s handwritten notes, making small grammatical changes only when absolutely necessary, yet keeping the writing style of Vernon intact and to the period. The Comanche Native Americans also lived in Moro, simultaneously with the arrival of the author’s great-grandparents in 1879. The author, having read dozens of books regarding the Comanche Native Americans, became fascinated with Comanche life on the Southern Plains. He read stories of captured Comanche slaves such as Cynthia Ann Parker who became so enamored with her Comanche life such that when returned to her original white family, she still pined away to return to her Comanche family, refusing to eat and dying a slow, painful death. The author also learned that Comanche males only have one career path—take care of the horses as a youth, become a skillful raider capturing more horses as a young adult, and finally return to the Comanche homelife on the Comanche horse ranches as an older adult, somewhat used up following Comanche life as a raider. The author takes his knowledge of Comanche lore and pens his original story connected to historical places and events—presenting how life may have been for a Comanche family living at Moro and adjusting to the arrival of the European settlers in the 1850s. Spending even more time in an archaeological excavation of an actual Toyah encampment at Moro, the author’s findings reveal further insights into the Toyah culture and how their lives were often justified while engaging the ferocious bears at Moro. Taken together, these findings generate more information on many issues regarding the Toyahs while at Moro; yet at the same time, these findings also pose unanswered questions that perhaps could be explored with less direct means or psychic channeling. Consequently, the author obtains the services of four psychic mediums to assist in his evaluation. These psychic channelings reveal more unique information regarding these Toyahs and their lives at Moro. So come take this journey with the author, a thousand years in the making, and witness how various lives were impacted, shaped, and molded, all within this unique community of Moro. This journey and these events are all based upon the archaeological records, psychic readings, historical records, and events that occurred to the author while living at Moro.

Sam and Jemma stood facing the oncoming raiders with no weapons. As the raider drew near, the air shimmers by Sam and Jemma’s right hands; an axe appeared in Sam’s hand, while a sword appeared in Jemma’s. The raiders were dead in a few heartbeats and the weapons shimmered out of existence. The bears were back.

As majestic as they are dangerous, and as timeless as they are current, bears continue to captivate readers. Speaking of Bears is not your average collection of stories. Rather it is the history, compiled from interviews with over 100 individuals, of how Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks, all in California’s Sierra Nevada, created a human-bear problem so bad that there were eventually over 2,000 incidents in a single year. It then describes the pivotal moments during which park employees used trial-and-error, conducted research, invented devices, collaborated with other parks, and found funding to get the crisis back under control. Speaking of Bears is for bear lovers, national park buffs, historians, wildlife managers, biologists, policy and grant-makers, and anyone who wants to know the who, what, where, when, and why of what once was a serious human-bear problem, and the path these parks took to correct it. Although these Sierran parks had some of the worst black bear problems in the country, hosted much of the research, and invented the bulk of the technological solutions, they were not the only ones. For that reason, intertwining stories from several other parks including Yellowstone, the Great Smoky Mountains, and Banff-Canada are included. For anyone seeking solutions to human-wildlife conflicts throughout the world, the lessons-learned are invaluable and widely applicable.

As the global war on terror enters its second decade, the United States military is engaged with militant Islamic insurgents on multiple fronts. But the post-9/11 war against terrorists is not the first time the United States has battled such ferocious foes. The forgotten Moro War, lasting from 1902 to 1913 in the islands of the southern Philippines, was the first confrontation between American soldiers and their allies and a determined Muslim insurgency. The Moro War prefigured American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than superficially: It was a bitter, drawn-out conflict in which American policy and aims were fiercely contested between advocates of punitive military measures and proponents of conciliation. As in today's Middle East, American soldiers battled guerrillas in a foreign environment where the enemy knew the terrain and enjoyed local support. The deadliest challenge was distinguishing civilians from suicidal attackers. Moroland became a crucible of leadership for the U.S. Army, bringing the force that had fought the Civil War and the Plains Indian Wars into the twentieth century. The officer corps of the Moro campaign matured into the American generals of World War I. Chief among them was the future general John Pershing-who learned lessons in the island jungles that would guide his leadership in France. Rich with relevance to today's news from the Middle East, and a gripping piece of storytelling, The Moro War is a must-read to understand a formative conflict too long overlooked and to anticipate the future of U.S. involvement overseas.

THIS NEWLY ENHANCED EDITION OF THE AUTHOR'S 1936 BOOK IS PARTICULARLY RELEVANT TO THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE CURRENT MORO (ISLAMIC FILIPINO) POLITICAL AND BRUTALLY SAVAGE EVENTS IN THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS, INCLUDING ABU SAYYAF AND THE HISTORICAL CONNECTION TO BOTH TRADIONAL AND RADICAL ISLAM. It now contains photographs and maps from the author's private collection never before available; a new introduction setting out the author's history and connection to the Philippines; and a new comprehensive index to this history of the Moros' 500 year struggle to maintain their culture and their tradional homeland. LEGENDARY WARRIORS: THE ISLAMIC MOROS OF THE PHILIPPINES HAVE NEVER BEEN CONQUERED. To reach a real understanding of the forces of history that made the Moros the fearsome fighters that they were and are, the author gives the reader hard facts, careful research, and vivid prose. Although Hurley was writing at a much earlier time and from a western viewpoint, there is no doubt about his respect and admiration for the character and convictions of the fighting Moros, and his disdain for the ineffective strategies and tactics of the US military.