Lion Attack

Trespassing in mountain lion habitat is a dangerous idea. Mountain lions do not share their territory, and they will not hesitate to stalk, pounce, and bite to defend it. Read about people who are lucky to be alive after brutal battles with mountain lions.

Discusses the history of lion attacks on humans and the reasons for the attacks, including species endangerment, loss of habitat, and dangers of captivity.

This book describes the mountain lion, a predator that hunts by ambush, and recounts documented mountain lion attacks.

'This is what literature feels like when it is alive ... Lion Attack! documents what it means to be alive right now, showing how reality and fantasy co-exist.' ...

As a boy I listened avidly to all those romantic yarns of the elephant hunters and of the daring and prowess of the hunters on the ivory trail (stories like mine) with hairbreadth escapes. In dreams I saw myself in deserts and jungles... on the ivory trail... after the solitary buffalo.... dreaming of incredible adventures. Had I but known how true all my dreams would one day become...

Brilliant horsemen and great fighters, the Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south - the Chinese, the Persians and the Greeks - and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe. Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different - both communities benefiting from trading with each other. This led to the development of a brilliant art style, often depicting scenes from Scythian mythology and everyday life. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian life: their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, from the graves of kings on the Pontic steppe, with their elaborate gold work and vividly coloured fabrics, to the frozen tombs of the Altai mountains, where all the organic material - wooden carvings, carpets, saddles and even tattooed human bodies - is amazingly well preserved. Barry Cunliffe here marshals this vast array of evidence - both archaeological and textual - in a masterful reconstruction of the lost world of the Scythians, allowing them to emerge in all their considerable vigour and splendour for the first time in over two millennia.