The Cougar Almanac: A Complete Natural History of the Mountain Lion [Paperback]

Robert H. Busch (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1592282954 | ISBN-13: 978-1592282951 | Publication Date: June 1, 2004 | Edition: 1st

A close-up look at one of the last great predators of North America.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The Cougar Almanac is a thorough study of one of the most misunderstood of all the big cats also known as pumas, mountain lions, and panthers. Cougars are not only one of the last of North America's large predators, but also, with the exception of wolves, the most controversial. Elusive and shrouded in myth, the cougar is as fascinating as it is difficult to observe.
This book is the most comprehensive natural history of the cougar ever written, exploring distribution, behavior, biology, habitat, and conservation, with examinations of the near extinct Florida panther, and the Eastern cougar, which was thought to have been hunted to extinction long ago.
As human development pushes deeper into the wilderness, a growing concern about clashes with cougars has become frighteningly real. What will become of our big cat? Only education will offer hope of understanding how humans and wild animals can coexist in an increasingly shared habitat. The Cougar Almanac is a vital contribution to the literature regarding the largest wild cat of North America.

About the Author

Robert H. Busch is the author of eight books on natural history, including The Wolf Almanac, a best-selling selection of the Natural Science Book Club, and The Cougar Almanac. His writing has appeared in Nature Canada, Wildlife Conservation, Discovery, Country Journal, Grolier 1998 Anthology of Best Science Writing, and many others.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Lyons Press; 1st edition (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592282954
• ISBN-13: 978-1592282951
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,738,424 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Informative but preachy, December 28, 2004

By 

Beach Guy - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Cougar Almanac: A Complete Natural History of the Mountain Lion (Paperback)

This book is a survey of the cougar's natural history, including its habitat, distribution and behavior. The material is interesting, well written, and informative, and the book's many photos (some in color) are excellent. Unfortunately, the author's analysis of mankind's relationship to the cougar is a formulaic, cliche-ridden sermon that reprises an ever popular eco-myth. His essential premise -- yawn, we've heard this before -- is that Native Americans lived in reverential harmony with cougars until Europeans arrived to despoil the Americas. As a result, cougars - and other wildlife - have been pushed to the brink of extinction, and so right-thinking people must "bring cougars back" by resisting their ignorant neighbors' hysterical demands for cougar extermination. If you are an eco-religionist, you may enjoy hearing this familiar sermon preached again. But if you are searching for facts and an objective analysis of a more complex reality, then this book falls short. For example, although the author cites the research of Maurice Hornocker (perhaps the world's foremost cougar biologist), he fails to mention that Hornocker has said, "There are probably more lions in North America now than when Columbus hit our shores..." This hardly supports the author's "brink of extinction" hysteria. Similarly, the author's "blame-it-on-the-europeans" story-line fails to acknowledge that John Muir - a Scot who immigrated from Europe to America as a boy - launched the modern environmental movement by writing wilderness-advocacy books that were hugely popular with his Victorian audience. Nor does the author mention that broad public support for the preservation of wilderness existed by the mid-19th century (think of Thoreau, who reminded us that "In wildness is the preservation of the world"). So the actual facts regarding Europeans' impact on North American wildlife (and of America's attitude toward wilderness) is both more positive and more complex than the author's simplistic, stereotyped claims admit. A special problem with this book is its analysis of cougar attacks, which promotes a misleading and potentially dangerous theme. The author states that it is "contrary to the cat's nature" for cougars to attack people - a claim which must seem truly bizarre to cougar victims. And although the author grudgingly concedes that attacks have occurred (and are apparently increasing in frequency), he minimizes them by noting that many of the attacking lions may have been too sick to hunt for their "normal prey". Or they were females who were only protecting their young. But while the author attempts to validate these views by referencing the research of Paul Beier (another distinguished cougar biologist), he fails to mention that the data actually show that a large fraction of attacks are made by healthy, unprovoked cougars who clearly regard humans as prey. And although Beier's data record a few attacks by female lions with cubs, they do not show that the attacks were meant to protect the cubs. As a result of such flaws, this book is a distinctly mixed bag. It contains many interesting facts, but the author's analysis of them is often simplistic, and so his conclusions are sometimes mistaken. Let the reader beware!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars short but sweet, September 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Cougar Almanac (Hardcover)

Although this almanac is a bit on the short side, it is packed with information on the cougar, including a lot of information not found elsewhere. The photos are good, and the maps are fine, but it is the colorful writing that caught my eye on this one. Many almanacs are dry dry dry. This is one is not and should be purchased by anyone who loves the big cats.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Cougar Almanac, March 21, 2006

By 

Kevin D. Friedman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cougar Almanac: A Complete Natural History of the Mountain Lion (Paperback)

I was not only disappointed with this book, I was surprised by the propaganda type nature of its content. While well written, the known facts about the animals were skewed or omitted, replaced, instead by the author's decidedly biased opinions. I was further disheartened by the lack of any of the definitive biological works on these great cats in the works cited. He pulls some information from the work of Hornocker, but fails to include findings that don't fit the authors point of view. While taking the books published date into account,it still failed to offer findings of recent studies on the cats. I purchased this book in hopes of using it in a college paper and found it fell short of current facts, instead relying on personal point of view that is too subjective to include in any biological paper that is concerned with the truth. My biggest fear is that someone reading this book will mistake it for a completely factual work. Furthermore, his obvious dislike of hunters and his degrading belief that it is based on lower moral standards is enough to repel most open minded readers. It might be considered low morals to not print the facts that he claims do not exist.