There may be no more magnificent animal than the tiger. Yet, around the world, their populations are dwindling, and the Indian Bengal tiger is no exception. Wild Bengal tigers dwell in tropical jungles, brush, marsh lands, and tall grasslands in Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Bhutan, and Burma, hunting prey such as pigs, deer, antelope, and buffalo. Some estimates say there are fewer than 2,000 Bengal tigers and the entire world tiger population may be less than 3,000. The Life and Fate of the Indian Tiger offers a unique perspective on these exquisite cats. Author Tobias J. Lanz, who has been studying Indian tigers since 1998, incorporates historical and cultural topics, as well as conservation and social theories into his narrative. He paints a detailed portrait of the tiger's life in the wild, enriching that picture with descriptions of the plant, animal, and human life found in India's diverse tiger habitats. The book also looks at tigers in myth and religion, tiger hunting, and the rise of conservation. Each engaging chapter is a combination of social and historical narrative, interspersed with the author's personal observations and analyses of places, people, and events. Knowledge gained from his research on Indian history, geography, politics, and religion is matched with the personal experiences he had while travelling across the subcontinent to visit tiger sanctuaries. Personal observations on local cultures, scenery, and wildlife are balanced by discussions with the Indian people, ranging from government officials to villagers. The Indian tiger continues to survive against great odds. Written in part to engage the reader in conservation efforts, The Life and Fate of the Indian Tiger outlines the main programs and policies enacted to save the tiger in India. Lanz dedicates a final chapter to global efforts at tiger conservation, explaining what can and must be done to safeguard the future of one of the world's rarest and most beautiful creatures.

Like to walk through one of the hathivanas (elephant forests) maintained by Mauryan king Chandragupta? Wish to be part of the royal dinner of a Mughal Emperor, with the palate containing a variety of forty meat dishes? Desirous of having a glimpse of the head on the shield and full-mount trophies of tigers and lions, decorating the halls and walls of the military lounges, lavish palaces and royal houses of the British Raj? Conservation Conundrum - Journey of India’s wildlife through ages is a pen-picture of the glory and good times, the trials and tribulations, persecution and perturbation of the country’s wild animals in its recorded history. The author has captured the theme through a historian’s kaleidoscope, where from a period of plenty in the ancient India, animal numbers plummeted to its lowest, when the country was into its first two decades of independence. From a situation of no-hope, how most of the iconic wildlife species registered a turn around and smart recovery in a span of half a century, despite the odds working against them forms the central thread. The author takes the reader through the pages in finding an answer to the usual dilemma, as to whether it is human need and interest or the future of the wild denizens that is important to a developing nation like India.

“A definitive treatment of one of the Soviet Union’s most significant writers.”—The Russian Review Vasily Grossman (1905–64), one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century, served for over 1,000 days with the Red Army as a war correspondent on the Eastern front. He was present during the street-fighting at Stalingrad, and his 1944 report “The Hell of Treblinka,” was the first eyewitness account of a Nazi death camp. Though he finished the war as a decorated lieutenant colonel, his epic account of the battle of Stalingrad, Life and Fate, was suppressed by Soviet authorities, and never published in his lifetime. Declared a non-person, Grossman died in obscurity. Only in 1980, with the posthumous publication in Switzerland of Life and Fate was his remarkable novel to gain an international reputation. This meticulously researched biography by John and Carol Garrard uses archival and unpublished sources that only became available after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A gripping narrative. “Fascinating . . . gives the reader a very clear insight into the horrors of the War on the Eastern Front . . . For anyone interested either in WWII or Soviet Communism, this book is a must.”—R.J. (Dick) Lloyd, author of Three Glorious Years “Grossman is a sufficiently important Soviet cultural figure to deserve a biography, and through his the Garrards say a good deal about cultural politics, internal repression, and antisemitism in the Soviet Union.”—Foreign Affairs

Popularly known as India's latterday Jim Corbett and 'tiger man', 87-year-old Billy Arjan Singh is by any standards an extraordinary man. At Tiger Haven, his home in a magical spot on the edge of the jungle in UP, Singh's experiments with bringing up three orphaned leopards, and also Tara, a tiger cub that he imported from a zoo in England, shot him into both limelight and controversy. His aim was to see if Tara's instincts would make her revert to the wild when she became mature. They did, and over the years, she produced four litters of cubs, thus proving his contention that it is possible to supplement dwindling wild stocks with zoo-born animals. But when it was discovered that the tigress had Siberian genes in her ancestry, he was accused of having introduced a 'genetic cocktail'into the jungle. Undeterred, Singh remained a champion of the forest and its denizens. It was almost entirely due to his advocacy that in 1973 the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, authorized the creation of the Dudhwa National Park. Now, in his eighties, comes recognition for his efforts. In March 2005, he received the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation award - a global honour administered by the World Wildlife Fund, that serves to recognize outstanding contributions in international conservation. In this affectionate biography, the British author Duff Hart-Davis tells the story of a man absolutely dedicated to the cause of animals, who has given fifty years of his own life to their conservation.

India is killing the Ganges, and the Ganges in turn is killing India. The waterway that has nourished more people than any on earth for three millennia is now so polluted with sewage and toxic waste that it has become a menace to human and animal health. Victor Mallet traces the holy river from source to mouth, and from ancient times to the present day, to find that the battle to rescue what is arguably the world's most important river is far from lost. As one Hindu sage told the author in Rishikesh on the banks of the upper Ganges (known to Hindus as the goddess Ganga) - 'If Ganga dies, India dies. If Ganga thrives, India thrives. The lives of 500 million people is no small thing.' Drawing on four years of first-hand reporting and detailed historical and scientific research, Mallet delves into the religious, historical, and biological mysteries of the Ganges, and explains how Hindus can simultaneously revere and abuse their national river. Starting at the Himalayan glacier where the Ganges emerges pure and cold from an icy cave known as the Cow's Mouth and ending in the tiger-infested mangrove swamps of the Bay of Bengal, Mallet encounters everyone from the naked holy men who worship the river, to the engineers who divert its waters for irrigation, the scientists who study its bacteria, and Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist prime minister, who says he wants to save India's mother-river for posterity. Can they succeed in saving the river from catastrophe — or is it too late?

This is the story of Flying Tiger Robert Brouk, a Flight Leader in the 3rd Squadron of the American Volunteer Group. In the months prior to Pearl Harbor, until the disbandment of the American Volunteer Group in July 1942, the Flying Tigers valiantly fought the Japanese over the skies of Burma and China. This story contains Robert's complete war diary. The diary outlines his dramatic experiences from the moment he enlisted in the American Volunteer Group to its disbandment. His story also contains snapshots of the life he led upon his return to his home in Cicero, Illinois; a graphic account of his untimely death; and accounts of how Robert has been remembered through the years.