There are a few creatures in the world who live still untamed, prowling through the rocks, blinking slowly at encroaching civilization far below. On Bountiful Black Mountain, a snow leopard hunts alone, artifact of a vanishing age. But hungry, desperate, as he is forced away from his home toward the tents and fires of the valley, the snow leopard is forced to confront a vision of humanity that's at once profound and disconcerting, poetic and brutal, tender and deeply moving. Through his eyes, we've never seen ourselves quite like this.

A guardian spirit in the form of a snow leopard looks over a small village in the Himalayas, and chooses a human successor, whom she trains to sing songs that will protect the villagers from soldiers who search for gold and slaves.

The remarkable story of the heroic effort to save and preserve Afghanistan's wildlife-and a culture that derives immense pride and a sense of national identity from its natural landscape. Postwar Afghanistan is fragile, volatile, and perilous. It is also a place of extraordinary beauty. Evolutionary biologist Alex Dehgan arrived in the country in 2006 to build the Wildlife Conservation Society's Afghanistan Program, and preserve and protect Afghanistan's unique and extraordinary environment, which had been decimated after decades of war. Conservation, it turned out, provided a common bond between Alex's team and the people of Afghanistan. His international team worked unarmed in some of the most dangerous places in the country-places so remote that winding roads would abruptly disappear, and travel was on foot, yak, or mule. In The Snow Leopard Project, Dehgan takes readers along with him on his adventure as his team helps create the country's first national park, completes the some of the first extensive wildlife surveys in thirty years, and works to stop the poaching of the country's iconic endangered animals, including the elusive snow leopard. In doing so, they help restore a part of Afghan identity that is ineffably tied to the land itself.

This unusual memoir of a spirited girl in the remote region of Nepal described in Peter Matthieson’s The Snow Leopard vividly portrays life in her primitive mountain village in the 80s, her struggles in bewildering Kathmandu, and her journey to America to receive life-saving surgery. An inspiring story of an indomitable spirit conquering all obstacles, a tale of a girl with a disability on her way to becoming a dynamic woman in a new world.

C.1 ST. AID. JR. LIBRARY GUILD. 08-25-2009. $18.00.

Twin snow leopard siblings survive their first year of life in Pakistan's Hindu Kush mountains by learning critical skills from their mother, including how to hunt, where to find shelter, and to stay away from humans.