A feline feeding -- A taxing tradition -- The logical libertarian -- A quartet of colonists -- A rousing response -- The converted caretaker -- The blackness of the bear -- The scrappy survivalist -- The animal admirers -- Fanning freedom -- The principled pastor -- A battle with bears -- Unlocking utopia -- A history of heat -- The pastor purplifies -- The campfire clash -- A deluge of doughnuts -- The survivalists struggle -- A bureaucracy of bears -- The caretakers confined -- The hidden hitchhiker -- The pastor's plan -- A bear's belligerence -- A huddle of hunters -- The assault's aftermath -- A pressing of poachers -- The pastor is pushed -- A neighbor annoyed -- The pastor's price -- A propagation of prerogative -- The respectable riot -- An experiment ends -- A denouncement of doughnuts -- A jeopardous journey -- The freedoms forgotten

"Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road, turned that plan into reality. Public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws didn't disappear, but they got quieter: meek suggestions barely heard in the town's thick wilderness. The bears, on the other hand, were increasingly visible. Grafton's freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city, in an effort to get off the grid. And with a large and growing local bear population, conflict became inevitable. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is both a screwball comedy and the story of a radically American commitment to freedom. Full of colorful characters, puns and jokes, and one large social experiment, it is a quintessentially American story, a bearing of our national soul"--