Book using the journey of that young male cougar from South Dakota to Connecticut to discuss the evolution, behaviour and cultural history of mountain lions in North America. Like Stolzenbug's previous book, Rat Island, focus on the somewhat wild personalities of people dedicating their lives to animal research animates the book. We get to know a series of wild life biologists, interested amateurs, hunters, conservationists and general crackpots who are all deeply, deeply invested in the Eastern Cougar.

As someone who spends a lot of time telling people they have seen otter tracks when they think they've seen cougar tracks (including when there ARE cougar tracks RIGHT THERE, no they still find otter), and that no that's a mink, not a cougar kitten (going down to the water to have a bath!), I felt a bone-deep sympathy with the professional wildlife people trying to prove that the Eastern Cougar was extinct and people weren't actually seeing them. (It is extinct, and people were seeing everything but cougars.) As with Coyote America, you can feel the author's frustration that research, ecosystem management and basic logic keep getting thrown out the window to excuse hunting predators. Maybe this book will change that, but it doesn't seem likely to hit the target audience.

I was very interested to learn the history of cougar attacks on people. I'd always grown up with an understanding that people were on the menu, and it turns out they are but that's largely specific to the cougars of my region, not continent wide. Guess we got lucky! Though there are still only a couple of attacks a year, as opposed to say dog bites or getting hit by lightening.

Would very much recommend this to anyone with an interest in ecology in North America, or amusing stories about biologists. Many cougars do die in the course of this book, but generally less horrifically than in the coyote one, and no one mentions evolutionary psychology.