This very fine work of nonfiction brings to mind John Vaillant's The Tiger, about a man-eating Amur tiger in Russia. In this case, it's a Bengal, the place is the Himalayan border area of Nepal and India, and the time is 1907. The Champawat, by most estimates, killed 450 humans over many years before it was hunted and killed by Irish-Indian Jim Corbett. The author does a great job of pulling apart the environmental and geopolitical factors that pushed the tiger to the edge of its habitat and forced it to turn to humans as its primary food source. My only criticism, and it's one I make frequently, is...maps. More maps. Please!
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