When Alan Rabinowitz was young, he was shy and couldn't speak well. On a trip to the Bronx Zoo he felt a connection with the jaguar there, and when he grew up he became a world-renowned conservation biologist working with jaguars in Belize. This book talks about jaguars in captivity, their history in the world, and current(ish) efforts to keep them from extinction.

I only read the first 4 chapters of this book, and the last chapter. I did not care for it much at all. The writing is not very accessible (speaking as a reader who is very familiar with the work of conservation biologists, and with reading scientific papers) an could not keep my interest. I did not care for Rabinowitz at all. He is very disdainful of non-scientist humans, particularly those living in the South American countries where jaguars roam, and insensitive to the point of being borderline racist. Also a lot of the premise of the book is that jaguars are ~*~special~*~, which I just don't buy. I think it's more likely that Rabinowitz views them as special because he has studied them extensively, not the other way around.

I don't doubt that Rabinowitz is doing great work for jaguars and other South American animals and plants, but I don't plan to read any more of his own writing. ( )