This is a detailed and heart-felt account of the author's efforts and experience od conducting research into tigers in the dry forests of Panna National Park, in northern Madhya Pradesh. The author generously shares technical details of his research and tele-monitoring efforts, during the period of vigorous growth of the tiger population. By closely following individuals that had been radio-collared, he and his team were able to understand how tigers held and sometimes shared or co-used their territory, jhow the cubs were trained and how they found territories of their own, the different 'leopard-like' tactics used by the unattached males that were 'floaters' among the territorial individuals, the threats to the tigers within the core area and especially in the buffers and the periphery near human habitation, and so on. After having gone through this technical first half, the reader is then treated to a frank and detailed expose of the debacle that followed a change of guard in the leadership at the park, when the researchers were seen as intruders, and the book was thrown at them and facilities for monitoring withdrawn. The author links this directly to the ultimate loss of all the tigers to poaching, poisoning, and other factors, despite adequate prey base. Subsequently, tigers from other parks were brought in, and the story is rounded up with a tribute to the intensive efforts to retain them in Panna under a new leadership. In the course of his account, the author has clearly named the individuals who ignored his findings and warnings of depleting population. I personally feel this provides a terrific illustration of how a bureaucracy 'closes ranks' in the face of adverse findings or criticism, and this should be used as a case study both by the forest officers' training institutions, and by NGOs to figure out how they should approach the administration without antagonising them. In the last chapter, the author outlines a scheme of developing buffer populations of tigers in the adjoining non-PA (Protected Area) tracts; it would be interesting to see the response of other experts and PA managers to these ideas. ( )