The Cougar Almanac

Rating:
Summary: short but sweet
Review: Although this almanac is a bit on the short side, it is packed with information on the cougar, including a lot of information not found elsewhere. The photos are good, and the maps are fine, but it is the colorful writing that caught my eye on this one. Many almanacs are dry dry dry. This is one is not and should be purchased by anyone who loves the big cats.

Rating:
Summary: author is biased towards houndsmen and hunters of pumas
Review: buy a copy of harley shaw's "soul among lions" and you will have a better understanding of the puma's role in the west

Rating:
Summary: author is biased towards houndsmen and hunters of pumas
Review: buy a copy of harley shaw's "soul among lions" and you will have a better understanding of the puma's role in the west

Rating:
Summary: Informative but preachy
Review: This book is a survey of the cougar's natural history, including its habitat, distribution and behavior. The material is interesting, well written, and informative, and the book's many photos (some in color) are excellent. Unfortunately, the author's analysis of mankind's relationship to the cougar is a formulaic, cliche-ridden sermon that reprises an ever popular eco-myth. His essential premise -- yawn, we've heard this before -- is that Native Americans lived in reverential harmony with cougars until Europeans arrived to despoil the Americas. As a result, cougars - and other wildlife - have been pushed to the brink of extinction, and so right-thinking people must "bring cougars back" by resisting their ignorant neighbors' hysterical demands for cougar extermination. If you are an eco-religionist, you may enjoy hearing this familiar sermon preached again. But if you are searching for facts and an objective analysis of a more complex reality, then this book falls short. For example, although the author cites the research of Maurice Hornocker (perhaps the world's foremost cougar biologist), he fails to mention that Hornocker has said, "There are probably more lions in North America now than when Columbus hit our shores..." This hardly supports the author's "brink of extinction" hysteria. Similarly, the author's "blame-it-on-the-europeans" story-line fails to acknowledge that John Muir - a Scot who immigrated from Europe to America as a boy - launched the modern environmental movement by writing wilderness-advocacy books that were hugely popular with his Victorian audience. Nor does the author mention that broad public support for the preservation of wilderness existed by the mid-19th century (think of Thoreau, who reminded us that "In wildness is the preservation of the world"). So the actual facts regarding Europeans' impact on North American wildlife (and of America's attitude toward wilderness) is both more positive and more complex than the author's simplistic, stereotyped claims admit. A special problem with this book is its analysis of cougar attacks, which promotes a misleading and potentially dangerous theme. The author states that it is "contrary to the cat's nature" for cougars to attack people - a claim which must seem truly bizarre to cougar victims. And although the author grudgingly concedes that attacks have occurred (and are apparently increasing in frequency), he minimizes them by noting that many of the attacking lions may have been too sick to hunt for their "normal prey". Or they were females who were only protecting their young. But while the author attempts to validate these views by referencing the research of Paul Beier (another distinguished cougar biologist), he fails to mention that the data actually show that a large fraction of attacks are made by healthy, unprovoked cougars who clearly regard humans as prey. And although Beier's data record a few attacks by female lions with cubs, they do not show that the attacks were meant to protect the cubs. As a result of such flaws, this book is a distinctly mixed bag. It contains many interesting facts, but the author's analysis of them is often simplistic, and so his conclusions are sometimes mistaken. Let the reader beware!

Rating:
Summary: Everything you wanted to know about cougars
Review: This is a wonderful book! I've always been interested in cougars and now that they are showing up in my state where they haven't been spotted for a hundred years, I find the cats even more intriguing. Mr. Busch has written a great book and good pictures too!