This work studies the history of imperial hunting and conservation in colonial India from the end of the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. It analyses early colonial hunting during the Company period going on to survey, in depth, different aspects of hunting during the high imperial decades. Based on original, printed, and secondary sources, it examines hunting at various social and ethnic levels, and also in different geographical contexts.In doing so, the author covers vast ground, including about the rituals, the variety of prey, the hierarchies of animals shot and hunted, the technology of firearms, the forms of hunting on horseback, and the introduction of hunting with hounds.

From the author of The Soul of an Octopus and bestselling memoir The Good Good Pig, a book that earned Sy Montgomery her status as one of the most celebrated wildlife writers of our time, Spell of the Tiger brings readers to the Sundarbans, a vast tangle of mangrove swamp and tidal delta that lies between India and Bangladesh. It is the only spot on earth where tigers routinely eat people—swimming silently behind small boats at night to drag away fishermen, snatching honey collectors and woodcutters from the forest. But, unlike in other parts of Asia where tigers are rapidly being hunted to extinction, tigers in the Sundarbans are revered. With the skill of a naturalist and the spirit of a mystic, Montgomery reveals the delicate balance of Sundarbans life, explores the mix of worship and fear that offers tigers unique protection there, and unlocks some surprising answers about why people at risk of becoming prey might consider their predator a god.

'An IAS officer's must-read anecdotal account of how official karma prevails over personal dharma.' - Y.V. Reddy, former RBI governor India is famous for Jim Corbett's tales of hunting man-eaters in the Kumaon region. Equally fascinating are the tiger hunting tales that senior bureaucrats recount, of achievements real and imagined, when they look back on their career. K. Pradeep Chandra has many stories of this kind to tell, and for those interested in the IAS, they are of immense use. From a career that spanned thirty-four years, there are examples of fighting corruption, ignorance and casteism. There are also problems that defy solution - an old woman whose insistence on division of land results in a tragedy, an attempt to find an acceptable solution to ownership of shifting lanka (island) lands in Rajahmundry. And there is a taut chapter on a prolonged negotiation with naxalites when lives of fellow officers are at stake; a lesson that a course book may not offer. Pradeep Chandra also shares about the challenges of working with powerful politicians like N.T. Rama Rao, Chandrababu Naidu and K. Chandrasekhar Rao. At the beginning of his career, his father had told him, 'If you can make a concrete difference in the lives of 100 poor people, you would have some meaning in your life.' As the author discovered, this was perhaps the hardest thing to accomplish, and what gave his work the truest value.

A National Geographic photographer embarks on a one-man mission to address the plight of the tiger before it's too late.

The acclaimed journalist’s New York Times–bestselling essay collection: “hilarious, nimble, and thoroughly illuminating” (Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground Railroad). In this highly anticipated debut collection, Brian Phillips demonstrates why he’s one of the most iconoclastic journalists of the digital age, beloved for his ambitious, off-kilter, meticulously reported essays that read like novels. The eight essays assembled here—five from Phillips’s Grantland and MTV days, and three new pieces—go beyond simply chronicling some of the modern world’s most uncanny, unbelievable, and spectacular oddities. They explore the interconnectedness of the globalized world, the consequences of history, the power of myth, and the ways people attempt to find meaning. Phillips searches for tigers in India, and uncovers a multigenerational mystery involving an oil tycoon and his niece turned stepdaughter turned wife in the Oklahoma town where he grew up. Dogged and self-aware, Phillips is an exhilarating guide to the confusion and wonder of the world today. If John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead was the last great collection of New Journalism from the print era, Impossible Owls is the first of the digital age.