Black Market: Inside the Endangered Species Trade in Asia

With more than 100 powerful color and b&w photos, this at once eye-opening and deeply disturbing book is an urgent call to action. Davies, a Bangkok-based journalist, describes the plight of various disappearing Asian species, including tigers, bears and leopards in Thailand; pythons and other snakes in Vietnam; and Sumatran orangutans. Davies points to traditional beliefs in the healing powers of animal parts as a major driving force of the market, and takes the reader through several poaching scenarios to illuminate how the animal trade actually works. Some of the photos in the book are not for the faint-of-heart (severed tiger heads, bear paws, pickled snakes, etc.), but the book sheds light on a shadowy, often illegal set of practices.