Amazon.com Review
North America's largest wildcat stalks a landscape of myth, fear, and isolation. Most people--even ardent outdoors enthusiasts--will never see one. "In eleven years of hiking, boating, guiding, and exploring," says writer Pam Houston, "I've come face to face with nearly every North American game species"--except a mountain lion. But as we encroach increasingly on their habitat, the tally of sightings goes up, along with stories of attacks on humans and even deaths. The essays that make up Shadow Cat introduce us to the animal and the controversies that surround it. Divided into three parts, the collection covers natural history, eyewitness accounts (from biologists, hunters, and admirers), and the complex, sometimes nasty politics surrounding Felis concolor, variously known as cougar, catamount, panther, puma, painter, and mountain lion. Noted conservation writer Ted Williams exalts in the animal's population comeback after decades of persecution; Rick Bass tells of his own history with a legendary lion in the Yaak Valley of Montana; and Chris Bolgiano puzzles over improbable sightings in the East. The collection's true high moments arrive, however, in skillful editing that reveals an interconnected community of cat fanciers and the complicated ethics they navigate in their avocations. In "Eat of This Flesh," celebrated environmental writer David Quammen (Song of the Dodo) sits down to a meal of stir-fried lion, chewing over some difficult ethical questions: "I will let the butcher do all of my killing. I will destroy habitat, but not animals. I will eat stir-fried shrimp, stir-fried beef, even stir-fried elk, but not stir-fried lion. Huh?" In the next piece, E. Donnall Thomas Jr.--doctor, writer, bow hunter, and the chef in the previous essay--serves up a taste of the hunt, musing,
No matter how many times I stare up into an evergreen canopy and see a mountain lion, I doubt that I will ever become accustomed to the experience, and to tell the truth, I hope I never do. Tawny and graceful, the cat looks as if it belongs on another continent, if not another planet.As coauthor Elizabeth Grossman explains in her introduction, "these powerful predators have, in many ways, become emblematic of the debate over [preserving] wildness and wilderness"--a debate that more and more is binding those who would hunt a lion with those who would protect it. Such ironies seem almost appropriate. The whiskered face that emerges in Shadow Cat is of a regal yet inscrutable predator, one threatened by habitat loss, public misapprehension, and its own uncanny ability to survive. --Langdon Cook
From Publishers Weekly
Divided into three sections (natural history, encounters and government policies), Ewing (Going Wild in Washington and Oregon) and Grossman's collection of 20 brief essays and stories presents a multifaceted view of America's mountain lion, also known as the panther, cougar, puma and catamount. Though the selections?many original to this volume?are generally clearly written, some are zestier than others. Susan J. Tweit's "Mountain Lion" is little more than a list of the great cat's statistics, while Ted Williams's "The Lion's Silent Return" provides an impassioned view of the animal's history and the laws that threaten it. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas convincingly imagines a puma's trip into a city and provides useful advice on how to protect yourself from attack. However, Rick Bass's tale about a young man's first cougar sighting and Pam Houston's essay on how her search for Edward Abbey's mountain lion led her to discover other joys in the West don't match those authors' best work. Overall, though, this anthology, which also presents pieces by Terry Tempest Williams, David Quammen and Chris Bolgiano, among others, brings fresh material to what the editors call the "debate over wildness and wilderness," and provides a wealth of information on the cat that once roamed from Canada to South America. (Apr.) FYI: Formerly an agent with Sterling Lord in New York, Grossman is now a media and publishing manager for Northwest Environment Watch in Portland.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
