Tracking the many moods of the tiger, this book traces the progress of efforts to save the magnificent animal in India. Documenting tiger watching in Ranthambhore from the 1970s to the late 1990s, the second, enhanced edition discusses the tiger tragedy of winter-spring 2004-5 and argues fornew and more radical initiatives to protect the animal and, by extension, wilderness itself. An impassioned plea for greater involvement of administrators and general public alike, this book is a must read for tiger enthusiasts, animal lovers, environmentalists, and the general reader.

The tiger has captured the imagination of human beings from the beginning of recorded history. It has been feared, worshipped, admired, hunted, studied, photographed, written about, immortalized in art and poetry, and has enthralled king and commoner alike. Tiger Fire celebrates this magnificent predator by bringing together the very best non-fiction writing, photography and art on the Indian tiger from the first written description of a real-life encounter with the animal by the Mughal Emperor Babur in the sixteenth century to photographs and studies of the last of the species surviving in the wild today. Conceived and edited by the world's foremost authority on the Indian tiger, Valmik Thapar (who has also contributed many pieces and photographs to this volume), the book's contributors are drawn from an array of renowned naturalists, writers, photographers, and tiger enthusiasts down the centuries including Babur, Akbar, François Bernier, Thomas Roe, R.G. Burton, Walter Campbell, Thomas Williamson, F.W. Champion, Kesri Singh, Jim Corbett, Hugh Allen, Richard Perry, Arjan Singh, George Schaller, Kenneth Anderson, M. Krishnan, Peter Jackson, Fateh Singh Rathore, Kim Sullivan, Tejbir Singh, Jaisal and Anjali Singh, Aditya 'Dicky' Singh, K. Ullas Karanth, Dharmendra Khandal, and Dhritiman Mukherjee. Culled from over a million words (both published and unpublished) on the animal, and several thousand photographs, the accounts and pictures assembled in this book show us the tiger in extraordinary and compelling detail.

Fateh Singh Rathore devoted the better part of his life to making Ranthambhore National Park a safe haven for the tiger population to live and grow in. He was intolerant of red tape and led a tireless crusade against poachers. Globally respected for his work, he was unpopular with Indian forest officials whenever he sought to point out anything that went wrong or the falling tiger numbers. In such cases, the official reaction was always denial—in other national parks such as Sariska or Panna, this kind of denial has led to a near wipeout of the entire tiger population. Fateh survived a bid on his life, fought stiff resistance from a powerful lobby of bureaucrats, and was even barred entry into his beloved national park, all because he would not give up his fight to save the tigers. Yet, against all odds, he remained an eminently upright man, admired by Rajiv Gandhi, Bill Clinton, Amitabh Bachchan, and wildlife activists like Valmik Thapar. Deeply loyal to his friends, Fateh remained an unconventional family man, a gifted amateur actor and a lover of the good life. Soonoo Taraporewala’s insightful biography, based on her years of association with this indomitable ‘tiger warrior’, not only brings alive Fateh Singh Rathore’s extraordinary legacy but also opens up wider questions about wildlife conservation in India.

Valmik Thapar first went to Ranthambhore, in 1976, at the age of twenty-three. He was a city boy, unsure of what lay ahead. When he entered the forest, which would go on to become one of the last strongholds of wild tigers, it had a profound effect on him, changing his life forever. For the next forty years, he studied nearly 200 Ranthambhore tigers, spending every waking moment in close proximity to these magnificent animals. Of the various tigers he observed a handful became extra special and it is these which come to glorious life in this book. They include Padmini, the Queen Mother, the first tiger the author got to know well; Genghis, the master predator, who invented a way of killing prey in water, the first time this had been observed anywhere in the world; Noon, one of his all-time favourites, who received her name because she was most active in the middle of the day; Broken Tooth, an exceptionally gentle male; Laxmi, a devoted mother, whose methods of raising her cubs revolutionized tiger studies; Machli, the most famous tigress in Ranthambhore and several more.

Leaving behind a nomadic and dangerous career as a journalist, Sarah DeVaughan returns to India, the country of her childhood and a place of unspeakable family tragedy, to help preserve the endangered Bengal tigers. Meanwhile, at home in Kentucky, her sister, Quinn-also deeply scarred by the past and herself a keeper of secrets-tries to support her sister, even as she fears that India will be Sarah's undoing. As Sarah faces challenges in her new job-made complicated by complex local politics and a forbidden love-Quinn copes with their mother's refusal to talk about the past, her son's life-threatening illness, and her own increasingly troubled marriage. When Sarah asks Quinn to join her in India, Quinn realizes that the only way to overcome the past is to return to it, and it is in this place of stunning natural beauty and hidden danger that the sisters can finally understand the ways in which their family has disappeared-from their shared history, from one another-and recognize that they may need to risk everything to find themselves again. With dramatic urgency, a powerful sense of place, and a beautifully rendered cast of characters revealing a deep understanding of human nature in all its flawed glory, Katy Yocom has created an unforgettable novel about saving all that is precious, from endangered species to the indelible bonds among family.

This book focuses on 35 years of Valmik Thapar's engagement with tigers in Ranthambhore National Park and across India. Thapar takes us on a journey of a lifetime from Ranthambhore's ancient and hallowed history and the story of the last two decades of tiger conservation in India to the government's role to stories of local efforts in the quest to save the tiger. Presenting field notes on nearly 150 different tigers in one location spread over 35 years, the close to 1200 photographs illustrate a journey of wildlife photography spread across four decades.