Book description
Consider, if you can, the case of Jacob Fowler, who heard what he
thought was the sound of his own skull cracking between the jaws of
a grizzly bear - only to discover that it was.
Or the Arizonan jogger who ran a mile back to her car with a rabid
fox clamped to her arm before driving to hospital for live-saving
inoculations. Or the woman who was attacked by a hyena, dragged from
her tent by her face and survived to tell of her ordeal.
The dangers of the animal kingdom are the stuff of legend but the
reality of man's vulnerability and of nature's savage power is far
more various, improbable and chilling than even the most active
imagination would fear. In this unique work of nature writing, you
will encounter the most formidable predators on land and sea - as well
as the most overlooked, bizarre and inventive hazards that mother
nature has to offer. Meet the cougar that can leap 40 feet and clear
8-foot fences with a fully-grown deer in its jaws, the tapeworm that's
been known to grow as long as 82 feet in the human gut and the
elephant that single-handedly destroyed an oil tanker.
Drawing on an enormous host of true encounters between man and
beast, this is the world's most authoritative compendium of animal
attacks on human beings. With mordant wit and expert timing, Gordon
Grice provides a gripping journey to the dark side of the animal
kingdom and a celebration of its humbling, savage glory.
(Originally published in hardback as The Book of Deadly Animals.)
Gordon Grice is one of the world's leading authorities on the dangers
of the animal kingdom, having dedicated a lifetime's study to the
subject ever since a cougar wandered onto his family's farm when he was
six. He is the author of
The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators
, and his writing has appeared in
Granta
, the
New Yorker
,
Harper's
and other magazines, and has been anthologized in
The Best American Essays
. He lives with his family in Wisconsin. www. deadlykingdom. com
