Stated first printing, dated. Tight, clean, flat, square, sharp and crisp book in DJ with very light wrinkiling nad ribbing. 1898, Tsavo River Kenya, the British Empire has employed 140 workers to build a railroad bridge. The bridge's construction comes to a violent halt when two maneless lions devour all 140 workers in a savage feeding frenzy that would make headlines?and history?all over the world. Caputo's Ghosts of Tsavo is a new quest for truth about the origins of these near-mythical animals and how they became predators of human flesh. Caputo raises the possibility that the short-maned 19th century killers were members of a subspecies of lion, a throwback to an earlier, cave-dwelling ancestor. These lions (preserved in the Field Museum in Chicago) have physical differences from the usual lion. They are taller, heavier, but with smaller skulls.