Tigers!

TIGERS. So hot right now. Mainly because of that Netflix show, which I felt behind the times for not watching, but now apparently it’s all kinds of problematic, so who wins now? That’s right, the lazy one. Anyway, I thought people might want to read some Tiger Facts in the face of all this, so I rounded up some tiger books, with a backlist bonus about the history of India! ENJOY.

The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their Culture by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. Want to learn all about cats in their many forms? Here y’go. Thomas covers the evolution of 30 cat species (including tigers!) and talks about things like cat societies. She states that cats in all their sizes have some extremely strong commonalities, which makes sense if you’ve watched a lion vs. a house cat pounce on something.

 

Spell of the Tiger: The Man-Eaters of Sundarbans by Sy Montgomery. This is by the woman who wrote The Soul of an Octopus and The Good Good Pig (recommended by Kim on For Real!). In this tiger-focused book, she talks about Sundarbans, a giant and swampy area between India and Bangladesh and home to a big mangrove forest. And also tigers. The tigers there, at least as of 1995 when this book was written, attacked humans living there, but also were worshiped by them. Interesting stuff.

Life in the Valley of Death: The Fight to Save Tigers in a Land of Guns, Gold, and Greed by Alan Rabinowitz. The place: Burma. The subject: tigers. Rabinowitz, who passed in 2018, was “CEO, and chief scientist at Panthera Corporation, a nonprofit conservation organization devoted to protecting the world’s 40 wild cat species.” So this guy was legit. He wrote 7 books, but this one covers his creation of the world’s largest tiger preserve. I’m 100% adding this to my TBR shelf because it looks both super interesting and also inspiring.

No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Man-Eater in History by Dane Huckelbridge. So APPARENTLY in 1900 in Nepal, one tigress killed over 400 people. Over 400! Tigers are such majestic and terrifying creatures! This book makes clear that it happened because she had been shot in the mouth and started going after humans because they were easier prey, which is the same story I heard about the lions of Tsavo (not getting shot, but having mouth pain). This book is described as NOT being pro-hunter, so if you want to read the story of this legendary animal, go-to.

BACKLIST BONUS

Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire by Ira Mukhoty. Yessss, women’s history. Mukhoty has written two books focusing on women in India, and this one is specifically about the women of the Mughal Empire, which lasted from the 1500s to the 1700s (technically until 1857). The subtitle is all honorifics, as a begum is an aristocratic title. This covers awesome women like Khanzada Begum who, “at sixty-five, rode on horseback through 750 kilometres of icy passes and unforgiving terrain.” There’s political intrigue and battle and romance and all kinds of cool stuff.

City Adrift: A Short Biography of Bombay by Naresh Fernandes. Bombay, now Mumbai, has been occupied by humans since at least the South Asian Stone Age. It’s made up of seven islands, and this very short (less than 200 pages) biography tries to encapsulate the spirit of the city, while giving a peek into its history and how it has changed today (today in this case being 2013). I love brief city histories, so this looks awesome.

 

Stay inside if you can, nonfictionites. Wash your hands, Clorox-wipe your phone, and read read read (while also taking a break to prevent eye strain!). If you are so inclined, check out COVID-19 Updates from the Bookish World. As always, you can find me on Twitter @itsalicetime and co-hosting the For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time! Enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.