What makes Of Tigers And Men different from other environmental books is that it is singularly lacking in hope. Here is an eco-book for realists, one which does not deal in political correctness or romantic cant.
The facts are brutally simple: the series of developments that will lead to the tiger's extinction in the wild, probably by the year 2010, have begun. In all likelihood, the last tiger to wander the Earth has already been born.
Ives, and the many characters he talks to on his travels, are sure of this much. The planet is in deep trouble and the tiger is about to become another symptom. It is too late to start attaching blame. Our best hope that we can find a solution, but the chances are remote.
Ives, a naturalist and safari tour guide, puts forward the idea of international parks, as opposed to national parks.
But it's a howl in the wind. Tigers will not even be allowed the dignity of dying on their own terms; more and more will end their days in circuses, or as novelty attractions in Chinese nightclubs.
The seeds for the tiger's destruction were sown, according to a wealthy Indian businessman whose obsession with the tiger springs from a harrowing incident in his youth, almost from the very beginning.