Cat experts Fiona and Mel Sunquist present comprehensive entries for each of the thirty-seven cat species that include color distribution maps and up-to-date information related to the species' IUCN conservation and management statuses, while their informative sidebars reveal why male lions have manes (and why dark manes are sexiest), how cats see with their whiskers, the truth behind our obsession with white lions and tigers, and why cats can't be vegetarians. The Wild Cat Book also highlights the grave threats faced by the world's wild cats--from habitat destruction to human persecution.

For decades, the banking industry seemed to be a Swiss watch, quietly ticking along. But the recent financial crisis hints at the true nature of this sector. As Simone Polillo reveals in Conservatives Versus Wildcats, conflict is a driving force. Conservative bankers strive to control money by allying themselves with political elites to restrict access to credit. Barriers to credit create social resistance, so rival bankers—wildcats—attempt to subvert the status quo by using money as a tool for breaking existing boundaries. For instance, wildcats may increase the circulation of existing currencies, incorporate new actors in financial markets, or produce altogether new financial instruments to create change. Using examples from the economic and social histories of 19th-century America and Italy, two decentralized polities where challenges to sound banking originated from above and below, this book reveals the collective tactics that conservative bankers devise to legitimize strict boundaries around credit—and the transgressive strategies that wildcat bankers employ in their challenge to this restrictive stance.

Did you know that European royalty once used cheetahs to hunt deer, or that caracals can capture birds by leaping six and a half feet straight up into the air from a standing start? Have you ever wondered whether domestic cats really do land on their feet when they fall, or how Canada lynx can stalk their prey in the winter without falling through the deep snow? Wild Cats of the World is a treasure trove of answers to questions like these, and many others, for anyone who's interested in learning more about the world's felids, including the ones with whom we share our homes. Mel and Fiona Sunquist have spent more than a decade gathering information about cats from every available source, many of them quite difficult to find, including scientific papers, descriptions of hunts, archeological findings, observations by naturalists and travelers, reports from government agencies, and newsletters from a wide variety of organizations. Weaving information from these sources together with their own experiences observing wild cats around the world, the Sunquists have created the most comprehensive reference on felids available. Each of their accounts of the 36 species of cat contains a description of the cat, including human interactions with it, as well as detailed data on its distribution, ecology and behavior, status in the wild, and efforts to conserve it. Numerous photographs, including more than 40 in full color, illustrate these accounts. Ranging from the two-pound black-footed cat to the five-hundred-pound tiger, and from the African serval with its satellite-dish ears to the web-footed fishing cat of Asia, Wild Cats of the World will fascinate and educate felid fans of any stripe (or spot).

This book examines the perceptions of European travelling writers about southern Western Australia between 1850 and 1914. Theirs was a narrow vision of space and people in the region, shaped by their individual personalities, their position in society, and the prevailing discourses and ideologies of the age. Christian, Enlightenment, and Romantic philosophies had a major influence on their responses to the land – its cultivation and conservation, and its aesthetic qualities – and on their views of both indigenous and settler colonial society – their class and assumptions of race and ethnicity. The travelling men and women perpetuated an idealised view of a colonised landscape, and a “pioneer” community that eliminated class struggle and inequality, even though an analysis of their observations suggests otherwise. Nevertheless, although limited, their narratives are invaluable as a reflection of opinions, attitudes and knowledge prevalent during an age of imperialism. Their perspectives reveal unique viewpoints that differ from those of immigrants who wrote about their hopes and fears in making a new life for themselves. These travellers were economically secure, literate and educated; foundations which provide an insight into the way power and privilege, implicit in their writings, governed the way they imagined Western Australia in the colonial and immediate post-federation period. The tinted lenses through which European travelling writers narrowly observed space and people, presented a mythical, imagined sense of southern Western Australia.