Why am I passionate about this?

This is a unique tale of exciting personal encounters with wild tigers as well my hard science that revealed their mysterious world. Readers will experience the conflicts, violence, and corruption, inherent to struggle to recover the charismatic, dangerous predator. Among Tigers is not the usual doomsday prophecy, but a clear roadmap for how we can grow tiger populations to new levels of abundance. While it does not gloss over the very real challenges, overall, it delivers a message of reasonable hope to nature lovers worldwide. I have scientifically researched tigers and, fought passionately to save them, making me uniquely qualified to tell this story like no one else can. 


I wrote

Among Tigers: Fighting to Bring Back Asia's Big Cats

By K. Ullas Karanth,

Book cover of Among Tigers: Fighting to Bring Back Asia's Big Cats

What is my book about?

K. Ullas Karanth has been engaged in the struggle to save wild tigers in India for over five decades. He…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India

K. Ullas Karanth Why did I love this book?

George Schaller is my idol and hero. His book inspired me when I was just 17 years old, then a reluctant student of engineering. It was the beacon of scientific clarity that focused my passion for tigers and nature towards clear-headed action, motivating me to struggle for over a decade and change my career to one devoted to the pursuit of tiger biology and conservation. It is a superb popular science book, in which the writing also rises to the highest literary quality-one that takes you right into the world of beleaguered tigers of India in the early 1960s.  

By George B. Schaller,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Deer and the Tiger as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Deer and the Tiger is Schaller's detailed account of the ecology and behavior of Bengal tigers and four species of the hoofed mammals on which they prey, based on his observations in India's Kanha National Park.

"This book is a treasure house of biological information and it is also a delight to read. . . . Excellent phoographs accompany the text."-Robert K. Enders, American Scientist

"The one book that has been my greatest source of inspiration is The Deer and the Tiger by George Schaller, based on the first ever scientific field study of the tiger. . . .…


Book cover of Tiger Moon: Tracking the Great Cats in Nepal

K. Ullas Karanth Why did I love this book?

Sunquists were my mentors who introduced me to the methods of safely catching wild tigers and radio-tracking them skillfully thereafter. Mel, a pioneer in large carnivore telemetry studies, and Fiona, an accomplished naturalist, writer and wildlife photographer, have collaborated in this book that describes in detail the first ever radio-tracking study of wild tigers they conducted in Chitwan Park Nepal in the early 1970s. It brilliantly captures the ecology of these tigers, the social context of conservation in Nepal, and their own love affair that blossoms after a chance encounter in the park. The sparkling, witty narrative and the accurate tiger science encased within it, make this a memorable read. 

By Fiona Sunquist, Mel Sunquist,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tiger Moon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Tiger Moon" is the powerful, poetic story of the Sunquists' two years studying tigers in Nepal. A new afterword tells the story of promising efforts to reconnect fractured Nepalese tiger habitats.


Book cover of Spell of the Tiger: The Man-Eaters of Sundarbans

K. Ullas Karanth Why did I love this book?

This is a non-fiction classic about ‘tiger culture’ of a remote part of India where tigers do not fear humans as they do elsewhere: in fact, they even hunt down and eat dozens of people every year in this giant Sundarbans swamp where natural prey is scarce. Montgomery is brilliantly evocative while bringing to life both nature and humans of the swamp, making the book a NY Times best-seller. The local culture, where tigers are loathed, feared, and revered as deities—all at the same—is portrayed stunningly. These habitats, tiger behaviors, and local cultures are strikingly different from the ones I describe in my book. Montgomery views the tiger through a filter of human culture, whereas I do so through a filter of hard ecology. Yet, we admire each other’s work because we are both under the spell of the same tiger.   

By Sy Montgomery,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Spell of the Tiger as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the author of The Soul of an Octopus and bestselling memoir The Good Good Pig, a book that earned Sy Montgomery her status as one of the most celebrated wildlife writers of our time, Spell of the Tiger brings readers to the Sundarbans, a vast tangle of mangrove swamp and tidal delta that lies between India and Bangladesh. It is the only spot on earth where tigers routinely eat people-swimming silently behind small boats at night to drag away fishermen, snatching honey collectors and woodcutters from the forest. But, unlike in other parts of Asia where tigers are rapidly…


Book cover of Tiger-Wallahs: Encounters With the Men Who Tried to Save the Greatest of the Great Cats

K. Ullas Karanth Why did I love this book?

Geoff is an eminent Historian having scripted many classics such as the Civil War TV series and, Diane, is a former Newsweek journalist who has reported on environmental issues. Both are tiger-keen aficionados’ who are—for some unfathomable reason—also morbidly fascinated by generations of gritty, grimy, and aggravatingly stubborn conservationists in India, who have fought to save India’s wild tigers through the colonial and post-colonial eras. They also write in an engaging, witty style focusing on tiger-obsessed humans rather than the magnificent cat. As one of their ‘subjects’ I believe this book provides the appropriate social and historical contexts for my own book.  

By Geoffrey C. Ward, Diane Raines Ward,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tiger-Wallahs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Describes efforts to save the Indian tiger from extinction, and why those efforts seemed doomed to failure


Book cover of Whole Earth Discipline

K. Ullas Karanth Why did I love this book?

I love tigers and nature. But through a half-century of experience and science in my own struggle to save tigers in an ancient, crowded nation aspiring for modernity and prosperity for its citizens, I have realized that we cannot hope to rewind the clock of material progress back to save wild nature by rejecting technology. Brand, the original counter-culture Guru, boldly shook off such baggage at an advanced age, and became a passionate, early advocate of ecomodernism, which tries to decouple human needs from nature in an effort to save nature through tools of modern science. I arrived independently at similar conclusions after years of hard scientific study of tigers, as well as my lived experiences of Indian society in transition. I believe Brand’s clearheaded manual provides a succinct introduction to ideas I have outlined in my own book as a framework to get to a world harboring ten times more wild tigers than now.  

By Stewart Brand,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Whole Earth Discipline as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An icon of the environmental movement outlines a provocative approach for reclaiming our planet

According to Stewart Brand, a lifelong environmentalist who sees everything in terms of solvable design problems, three profound transformations are under way on Earth right now. Climate change is real and is pushing us toward managing the planet as a whole. Urbanization?half the world?s population now lives in cities, and eighty percent will by midcentury?is altering humanity?s land impact and wealth. And biotechnology is becoming the world?s dominant engineering tool. In light of these changes, Brand suggests that environmentalists are going to have to reverse some…


Explore my book 😀

Among Tigers: Fighting to Bring Back Asia's Big Cats

By K. Ullas Karanth,

Book cover of Among Tigers: Fighting to Bring Back Asia's Big Cats

What is my book about?

K. Ullas Karanth has been engaged in the struggle to save wild tigers in India for over five decades. He tells the story of the tiger itself – its incredible biology and the unique place it holds in our imagination. By bringing the world's largest and most beloved cat back from the brink, how we also protect countless other species, from the freezing forests of Siberia to the steamy tropics of India. Karanth shares his life story packed with thrills and heartbreaks, culminating in the hopeful realization that tiger conservation battle can still be won.

Among Tigers shows us not only how the greatest of great cats can be saved, but also how we can bring It roaring back in numbers never-before seen in our lifetimes.  

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Book cover of Brighter Than Her Fears

Lisa Ard Author Of Brighter Than Her Fears

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What is my book about?

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However, Alice uncovers pending trouble with the family's land holdings, which threatens their livelihood on the farm. The growth…


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Interested in tigers, the conservation movement, and climate change?

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Climate Change 209 books