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Beast of Never, Cat of God: The Search for the Eastern Puma
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| List Price: | CDN$ 33.95 |
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Product Description
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1936898 in Books
- Published on: 2005-01-01
- Original language: English
- Dimensions: 1.08" h x 6.30" w x 9.26" l, 1.28 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 280 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Cougars have long been thought extinct in Michigan, but a coterie of environmentalists and wildlife enthusiasts, led by Michigan Wildlife Conservancy biologist Patrick Rusz, believe otherwise. In this engaging study of a wild animal and its human acolytes, journalist Butz traipses around with Rusz in search of droppings, paw prints, mauled deer carcasses and the testimony of people who have sighted the elusive beasts. He maintains a critical distance from the obsessive and sometimes off-putting Rusz and from his antagonists at the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, who remain dismissive of mounting evidence of the cat's presence. Butz, who was eventually granted his own magical glimpse of a prowling cougar, writes evocatively of the animal's habits and charisma. He makes it the focus of a larger panorama of backwoods northern Michigan, a hunter's paradise, with a quirky population of outdoorsmen and conservationists for whom the cougar offers both the promise and the pitfalls of an element of nature that can't be readily bent to human purposes. The result is a beguiling mixture of scientific lore, meditative natural history and vivid reportage. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Puma concolor goes by many names: cougar, catamount, mountain lion, and the author's preferred puma. Once found from the Atlantic to the Pacific, it has now been extirpated from the U.S. east of the Mississippi--or has it? An increasing number of people are claiming to have seen one. Nature writer Butz met Patrick Rusz, embarked on proving there were wild pumas in Michigan; he enlisted Butz as a reporter and sometime helper. What follows is a mix of politics (the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Rusz do not see eye to eye), history (both feline and human), and reporting, interspersed with the author's meditations on the meaning of wilderness and the place for large, toothy predators in the modern age. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
--Jim Harrison, author of True North
"This is a journey into wilderness and the imagination as serendipitous as The Orchid Thief. Butz's lyricism is matched by his relentless honesty, giving a taut portrait of vivid sinew and rich heart, a beast whose shadows cut across our lives in ways we don't always understand. Butz's soul searching and naturalist's vivid grasp, tooth and nail, breathe the beast to life."
--Doug Stanton, author of In Harm's Way
"The eastern mountain lion haunts our domesticated dreams, infusing our too-tame world with hope and excitement. In BEAST OF NEVER, CAT OF GOD, Bob Butz follows this ghost cat through the woods of Michigan and the thickets of science, politics and the human heart, wrestling with his own skepticism and a belief that the great predator is still out there. Just like the enigmatic animal at its core, BEAST OF NEVER, CAT OF GOD holds and does not let go."
--Scott Weidensaul, author of The Ghost with Trebling Wings: Science, Wishful Thinking and the Search for Lost Species
