The book "Striped Reckoning" is a fact-filled story of the lives and rescue of big captive cats.

She writes about the astonishing brutal mistreatment of lions, tigers, and other big cats in America.

She also tells how sanctuaries rescue and rehabilitate these suffering animals.

It's well-known that the lives of large captive animals can be highly compromised. Because of mass media, numerous people now know the story of the horrific lives of captive big cats kept in zoos, circuses, backyards, homes, and TV and movie sets and the sordid stories of Tiger Kings' Joe Exotic and others, including Tim Stark and Jeff Lowe all of whom were eventually put out of business.

I have found it very difficult to put together the complicated puzzle of how this all happened, and in her long-awaited highly acclaimed new book aptly titled Striped Reckoning: Tiger Kings and the Battle to Rescue America’s Captive Big Cats Big, award-winning author Carol Bradley beautifully assembles the main pieces into an understandable, coherent whole. Animal advocate or not, people have been moved by the tireless efforts to free these animals and regardless of one's stance on animal ethics, I'm sure Bradley's book will be an eye-opening read.

Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Striped Reckoning and how did you come up with the title?

Carol Bradley: The idea for this book came to me while I was attending the Performing Animal Welfare Society’s (PAWS) International Captive Wildlife Conference several years ago. There I watched a video of a tiny tiger cub being forced to swim in a pool at a roadside zoo in........

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