The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant

Nov 12, 2012 Jason Koivu rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Like the beast this book is about, The Tiger is patient. It stalks ahead with care and diligence as it learns about its prey, and each step forward the tension builds until the target is reached and then it pounces with devastating fury.

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant sounds like over-the-top macho stuff that should be avoided. Thankfully it is not. Instead it's a study of sociology, zoology, botany, history, geography, and the socio-economic climate of the far...more

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Mar 04, 2012 Dan Schwent rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: homework-from-the-ladies, 2012, nf

A tiger goes man-eater and terrorizes a remote Siberian village. Can Yuri Trush and his men end the tiger's bloody reign of terror or join its long list of victims?

It sounds like the teaser for a trashy thriller but this story really happened. The Tiger is the story of a rogue tiger and it's man-eating ways.

My description of The Tiger makes it sound like the book is one long tiger hunt but it's so much more than that. The tiger hunt piece is almost an adventure yarn but for me, the best parts o...more

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Feb 05, 2012 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, natural-history, russia, big-ideas, favorites

At its simplest, this is a tale of a tiger and two men. A Siberian tiger, huge, terrifying, beautiful, awe-inspiring. The two men: Vladimir Markov, an unemployed logger turned poacher, and Yuri Trush, a game warden whose job it is to catch poachers. They live within the tiger's range, the taiga or circumpolar boreal forest of the Russian Far East, which has been hard hit by perostroika (the locals refer to it as "katastroika"), a sort of post-industrial society in which the human inhabitants eke...more

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Nov 24, 2012 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Mike by: aggie_mike2003@yahoo.com

Shelves: non-fiction, history, tbb-2012-challenge, library

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival has a great piece of advice if you ever find yourself in the wilds… don’t screw with a tiger. (I would have said something stronger but my wife has told me to “clean up” my vocabulary.) This book gets a strong 4.5 to 5 Stars from me. I was hooked on the story from the first page. The drama of a wounded tiger seeking and wreaking vengeance sounds “Hollywood” but Mr. Vaillant shows how this true story is even better than cinematic fiction. The majo...more The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival has a great piece of advice if you ever find yourself in the wilds… don’t screw with a tiger. (I would have said something stronger but my wife has told me to “clean up” my vocabulary.) This book gets a strong 4.5 to 5 Stars from me. I was hooked on the story from the first page. The drama of a wounded tiger seeking and wreaking vengeance sounds “Hollywood” but Mr. Vaillant shows how this true story is even better than cinematic fiction. The major framework is built around the tiger, his victims and the pursuers out to kill the man-eater. What makes this book so interesting is the tangents that Vaillant goes off on (I can see how some would find this distracting from the story). I rate this book highly for the new concepts it introduced me to.

The backdrop of far eastern Siberia, deep in the grip of winter and suffering in the aftermath of the USSR collapse, is brought vividly to life. I studied Russian for 3 years in school, came up in the military with the Great Russian Bear threat hanging over our western way of life, trained to fight the USSR in the Fulda Gap and the North German plain, yet, always held a certain amount of respect for them. This book really brings the Russian capacity for endurance into focus. These people have a tough life in the forests and the taiga of Siberia. The characters in the book are all very interesting and often tragic or sad.

This book brings you into discussions of zoology, anthropology, sociology, taphonomy, and paleontology just to name a few areas. You are introduced to the concepts of Umwelt and Unbegung. These are fascinating ways to look at how we (and animals) may perceive our environment. Here is one discussion to give you an idea how the book explains predator and prey:

(view spoiler)[Ivan Dunkai’s son Vasily, a lifelong hunter who has shared his territory with tigers all his life, has come to a similar conclusion. On a bitterly cold day in March 2007, he tried to put the tiger into a context an outsider could understand. “A hunter can only rely on himself,” he said. “If anything happens, there is no one to help him, and all of us who live this way have a very advanced intuition. We also carry the experience of our ancestors in our heads: that’s how a man functions in taiga. The tiger is a hunter, just the same as a man is a hunter. A hunter has to think about how to get his prey. It is different for boar and deer: if leaves or cones fall down from a tree, that’s what they eat; there is no need to think. Tigers think.”

Clark Barrett, a professor in the anthropology department at UCLA and an expert on predator-prey dynamics, describes the deer’s advantage as the anywhere but here principle: all a prey animal needs to do is be anywhere the predator isn’t—it doesn’t matter if it’s a foot away, or a hemisphere—and it will live another day. The predator, on the other hand, must be exactly where its prey is; and at exactly the same moment, or it will starve. Thus, for a predator, mastery of both time and space—in addition to a thorough understanding of terrain and prey behavior—are crucial. Pack hunting, of course, increases the odds enormously, but unlike the wolf or the lion, the tiger is a solo stealth hunter and, thus, has a far more challenging task. Possessing neither the endurance to run its prey down, nor the numbers to surround and harry it, the tiger’s method must instead resemble that of the lone assassin: it must insert itself almost intravenously into its prey’s umwelt—an umwelt, it must be noted, that has evolved over millions of years to be exquisitely sensitive to the presence of felid predators. Making matters still more difficult is the fact that tiger prey typically travel in herds. With their dozens of eyes, ears, and nostrils, and their decades of collective tiger-evading experience, a herd of deer or boar can be as vigilant and jumpy as a Secret Service detail. In order to subvert this, the tiger must embody a contradiction: this large, pungent, extraordinarily charismatic animal must achieve a state of virtual nonexistence while operating inside the sphere of its prey’s highly attuned senses. Witnesses, native and Russian alike, agree that there is something almost metaphysical about the tiger’s ability to will itself into nonbeing—to, in effect, cloak itself. In the Bikin valley, it is generally believed that if a tiger has decided to attack you, you will not be able to see it. With the exception of the polar bear, which also hunts by stealth, there is no other land mammal this big whose survival depends on its ability to disappear. (hide spoiler)]

You will veer off the main story often but always with a point. A visit to the Kalahari Desert and the Bushmen gives an idea how man coexists with nature’s predators. A discussion of other paleoanthropologists gives you a different view on whether man was a hunter/killer or a scavenger in the earliest days. A great vignette from WWII-era South Africa and two German fugitives from the war is another enlightening story. I found these tangents instructive and fun. You will also relive tiger attacks with several who have survived these awful encounters. Here is a verse from one of the survivors:

I’ve read a tiger’s not dangerous,
They say the tiger won’t attack
But one thing’s not clear to me.
Has he read this, too? Does he know?

In the end, the Tiger meets his end but the chase is exciting right to the amazing final encounter. The impact of Chinese expansion and Russian corruption on the habitat is constant and may result in the extinction of this “czar of the forest”. Read this book to understand what a tragedy that will be.(less)

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Mar 25, 2011 Jbsfaculty rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, wagner-selections

Having heard of this book on NPR, I wanted to like it, the story of a man-eating tiger that hunts the hunters hunting it. The actual story could be told in 1/2 a cd; the other 9 1/2 CDs are filled with other stories. It is an ADD romp through the authors brain. If you want a geography work that goes down many, many tangential connections to the main story, this book will interest you. It is filled with many fascinating stories loosely connected to the main yarn. I got the book the b/c I was inte...more

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Apr 23, 2011 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

Let's start with the moral of the story first: Do not fuck with an Amur tiger. Because if you do, she'll probably hunt you down, break into your cabin, drag your mattress across a frozen river, and lie down on it while she waits for you to come home so she can eat you. Literally eat you.

John Vaillant's narrative about Amur tigers and the people who live with them in the remote village of Sobolonye, Russia is compelling enough that you'll start looking suspiciously at your cat by the time you're...more

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Sep 28, 2010 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mainstream, literary

The setting of John Vaillant’s remarkable work of narrative non-fiction The Tiger is Primorye, a little known province in Russia’s far east, a cruel and inhospitable place that is, counter-intuitively, crowded with the most unlikely profusion of wildlife, an array of flora and fauna so rich that the like of it exists in few other places in the world. Perhaps the most notable of these is the Amur tiger, an animal that has stepped maddeningly at the edges of dreams and superstition of all who cros...more

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Jun 06, 2011 L rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Every once in a while I crave one of these true-adventure/true-story tales. This one grabs you by the throat in the first page and does not let up. Talk about a skill with language, an ability to evoke--this is an amazingly written book, fantastic! And its about tigers, and politics, and people, and the environment they share. The environment is just incredible--sub-Arctic meets sub-tropics! Hurricanes and blizzards.

Vaillant weaves together culture, politics, history, and more to tell us of the...more Every once in a while I crave one of these true-adventure/true-story tales. This one grabs you by the throat in the first page and does not let up. Talk about a skill with language, an ability to evoke--this is an amazingly written book, fantastic! And its about tigers, and politics, and people, and the environment they share. The environment is just incredible--sub-Arctic meets sub-tropics! Hurricanes and blizzards.

Vaillant weaves together culture, politics, history, and more to tell us of the tiger. He gives a sense of one side of "the Russian soul." While I can't judge the veracity if his portrayal, it rings true. Even though he does go on and on with his anti-Sovietism, beyond Stalin, his criticism and cynicism really seem aimed more at bureaucracy and corruption, and do not stop with the Soviets. For instance, from his discussion of the degradation and rape of this unique ecosystem, we learn that: "The most valuable timber in the Far East grows in Primorye . . . Much of what China makes from this Russian wood finds it's way into American big box stores. The reason chain store prices--e.g., $20 for a solid oak toilet seat--seem too good to be true is because they are." (p. 34)

Life is hard and the area is sparsely populated, in part by exiles, in part by folks who maybe just couldn't get themselves up for the arduous (and expensive) journey back west, in part by serious loners, and in part by those who love it. Vaillant summarizes some of the difficulties: "In the taiga, the combination of poverty, unemployment, and highly dangerous people and animals exacerbates a situation that is, at best, untenable." (p. 44)

Vaillant gives us a strong flavor of the relationships between the men (and they are mostly men) and animals in this harsh environment, often through quotes with those living there. In talking about a tiger that killed a hunter, one friend says: "If the tiger had felt that it was his fault--if he had killed a dog or done something else wrong--then he would have gone away." (p.175) "The tiger is strong, powerful, and fair." (p. 178) There is much anthropomorphism here, not only as quoted, but also by Vaillant. In fact, he makes a case for its inevitability, even necessity. Certainly if it helps a hunter or trapper avoid crossing a predator like a tiger, and keep himself more or less adequately fed--who's to argue?

Beautifully written, this book displays a true respect and love for the area and all who life there.(less)

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Jul 04, 2011 Teresa Lukey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: my-absolute-fav-s, must-share-with-friends, i-learned-something, wow, 4-stars, non-fiction

First off, I want to say that I really wish I had taken notes while reading this book, so I could relay more specifics. There were several interesting quotes, I would have loved to have added to my favorite quotes list. The tale end of one quote went something like "realists carry a Kalashnikov", which pretty much sums up life in the frigid Siberian wilderness called the taiga, where people have a harsh existence with few resources available.

It is hard to imagine living in such a place and co-ex...more First off, I want to say that I really wish I had taken notes while reading this book, so I could relay more specifics. There were several interesting quotes, I would have loved to have added to my favorite quotes list. The tale end of one quote went something like "realists carry a Kalashnikov", which pretty much sums up life in the frigid Siberian wilderness called the taiga, where people have a harsh existence with few resources available.

It is hard to imagine living in such a place and co-existing with the Amur tiger, but there are stories of people shooing off a tiger that wanders to close the their abode, which almost makes me laugh. Wouldn't a normal person run in fear? These people are undoubtedly "tough as nails".

The recent events in this book occurred during the 90's. The most amazing pieces that stick out for me as far as these recent events go are:

That a huge 400-500 lb Amur tiger will hunt a person who has injured them in an poaching attempt. Yes, people who live in the taiga will attempt to poach in order to earn money by trading skins to the neighboring China. This tiger spent some time hunting the man who caused the injury and laid in wait outside his residence in order to attack at his arrival. That makes my skin crawl to think of it.

Most disturbing was the grizzly account of a man who looses his son to a tiger attack. Finding nothing but a couple of items he had been wearing at the time he was attacked. This boy was feeling pressure from his parents to provide for the family and went into the wilderness to hunt for food knowing full well there was an injured, hungry tiger on the prowl. Absolutely tragic.

This is an extremely interesting read. It not only details the Amur tiger, but also delves into the way of life in the region, which is pretty much hand to mouth. There is also a plethora of information regarding economics, history and politics in this far east region of Russia.

A truly interesting and well document book. Highly reccomended.(less)

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Jan 05, 2011 Lauren rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Lauren by: NPR

Shelves: general-nonfiction, animals, kindle

It's one of those books that you get so absorbed in and you learn all of these interesting facts that you want to share with people... for instance (I just have to share!) tigers are known for their virility and their strength - and the Sanskrit word for tiger *vyagghra* was Anglicized into "viagra" for the well-known impotency medication. Interesting, right? Well, there's more to learn inside this book!

The author tries to accomplish a lot in this book, and by and large, he succeeds. At the core...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Stacy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club-books, non-fiction

Somewhere between 4 and 5 stars.

This is excellent creative nonfiction. Reading about the power that the Amur tigers possess and the various encounters people have had with them left me with goosebumps several times. I loved the magical qualities attributed to the king of the taiga. What a magnificent animal! Also fascinating was the portrait Vaillant paints of the Russian taiga-dwellers involved in this tale: earthy, independent, and hardy with a deep respect for their natural environment. I fo...more

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May 14, 2013 Michael Flanagan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: travel-adventure, michaels-tbr-challenge

Why I enjoyed this book and the tale contained within its pages I could only bring myself to give it three stars. The story has all the makings of a spellbinding read. A psychotic tiger terrorising locals in Siberia and the hunt to find it, sounds awesome does it not?
The mechanics of the book is what detracted from the enjoyment of this read. It jumped around too much for me from chapter to chapter at times I forgot what the main narrative was. Why the information given was interesting I feel t...more

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Apr 09, 2012 Kat Lowe rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, nature, cat

What happens when you piss off the baddest dude in the hood? If he's a tiger: he smashes your stuff, shits in your yard, rips you limb-from-limb...and eats you. (Except for the eating part, is that really so different from what a drug dealer would do?)

If you are solely looking for a fast paced tale of 'vengeance and survival' you might be disappointed with this book. A good deal of 'space on the page' is devoted to backstory on the history of Russia and its people. (As it happened, I was interes...more

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Aug 07, 2011 Yvonne added it · review of another edition

There are tigers in far east Russia to this day, and an environment that supports four distinct bio-regions, unlike nowhere else on earth. If you find this interesting, and you have an excitement about tigers, love a good mystery, learning about other cultures, (in this case the hard-worn, hard-assed, passionate Russian culture), this book is for you. This is a rich, true story filled with men and women who live hard lives to survive in an unforgiving landscape where humans are just one of the a...more There are tigers in far east Russia to this day, and an environment that supports four distinct bio-regions, unlike nowhere else on earth. If you find this interesting, and you have an excitement about tigers, love a good mystery, learning about other cultures, (in this case the hard-worn, hard-assed, passionate Russian culture), this book is for you. This is a rich, true story filled with men and women who live hard lives to survive in an unforgiving landscape where humans are just one of the animals and where each species needs the other to survive. I was thrilled to learn about this place, and to know that somewhere on this earth man hasn't managed to make much inroad or impact on, yet.. Primorye (the region of Russia where this story happens), is difficult to get to, filled with dangerous predators, and lacks most modern conveniences.
The main story centres on a tiger who is on the hunt for man, which amazes and frightens the people of Primorye. They have lived alongside tigers for centuries and have had very little negative interaction with them. But this balance has temporarily tipped and it makes riveting reading.
Here's an excerpt.
“Primorye is also the meeting place of four distinct bioregions. Like their far-flung human counterparts, plants and animals from the Siberian taiga (forest), the steppes of Mongolia, the subtropics of Korea and Manchuria and from the boreal forests of the far north have all converged here, pushing the limits of their respective growing zones between coastline, alpine, floodplain and forest.....
.There is strong evidence suggesting that this region was a refugium, one of several areas around the Pacific rim that remained ice-free during the last glaciation, and this may help explain the presence of an ecosystem that exists nowhere else. Here, timber wolves and reindeer share terrain with spoonbills and poisonous snakes, and 25lb Eurasian vultures will compete for carrion with saber-beaked jungle crows. Birch, spruce, oak, and fir can grow in the same valley as wild kiwis, giant lotus and 60 foot lilacs, while whole pine trees bearing edible nuts may be hung with wild grapes and magnolia vines. These in turn, feed and shelter herds of wild boar and families of musk deer whose four inch fangs give them the appearance of evolutionary outtakes. Nowhere else can a wolverine, brown bear, or moose drink from the same river as a leopard in a watershed that also hosts cork trees, bamboo and solitary yews that predate the Orthodox church. In the midst of this, Himalayan black bears build haphazard platforms in wild cherry trees that seem too fragile for the task, opium poppies nod in the sun and ginseng keeps its secret in dappled shade.”
“Of the six surviving subspecies of tiger, the Amur is the only one habituated to arctic conditions. In addition to having a larger skull than other subspecies, it carries more fat and a heavier coat, and these give it a rugged, primitive burliness that is missing from is sleeker tropical cousins. The thickly maned head can be as broad as a man’s chest and shoulders, and winter paw prints are described using hats and pot lids for comparison.”
(less)

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Jun 28, 2011 Michelle added it · review of another edition

The Tiger is an immensely fascinating study of tigers in the taiga of Siberia, focusing closely on the true-life drama of a man-eating tiger that terrorized the area in 1997. Delving deeply into the psychology, political and socio-economic factors of the humans who populated the region, Mr. Vaillant portrays as accurate and clear an image of what occurred during that snowy and bitterly cold December as possible. Any reader of The Tiger will walk away from the novel have a better appreciation for...more The Tiger is an immensely fascinating study of tigers in the taiga of Siberia, focusing closely on the true-life drama of a man-eating tiger that terrorized the area in 1997. Delving deeply into the psychology, political and socio-economic factors of the humans who populated the region, Mr. Vaillant portrays as accurate and clear an image of what occurred during that snowy and bitterly cold December as possible. Any reader of The Tiger will walk away from the novel have a better appreciation for these magnificent animals and the delicate balance required to keep them in existence.

Mr. Vaillant excels at showcasing the true danger to the natural world. Tigers are known throughout history for being ferocious, extremely dangerous, and absolutely lethal. Yet, humans have always held a fascination for that which most terrifies us. Tigers are no exception. For generations, tigers have been hunted to the brink of extinction because of fear and the desire to prove one's manhood as much as the black market needs. Tiger populations have been decimated over the past several decades, proving that as fearsome as these animals are, humans are the more lethal of the two.

One cannot read The Tiger and not walk away with a better appreciation for tigers and, more importantly, for the need to protect these magnificent animals. As dangerous as they are, their impact on the food chain cannot be denied, and our world would be a poorer place without them. Much of what afflicts the tiger in the story is a result of direct contact with humans, and a reader is not hard-pressed to imagine how different the story might have ended had the tiger been ignored by all humans from the very first. Mr. Vaillant does not hide a tiger’s potential for lethal conduct but showcases how important they are to the taiga and how humans for hundreds of thousands of years have been able to live side-by-side with them in spite of the danger. If anything, The Tiger ends on a note of hope, as the tiger’s ability to adapt and survive has been proven over the years, and with a little help from humans, can recover and continue to grace this Earth.

Extremely well-written, The Tiger will attract readers of multiple genres. While The Tiger is nonfiction, the descriptions and pacing reads more like a suspense novel. Mr. Vaillant takes his time introducing each character and setting the scene to build tension for the final showdown between tiger and man. It is a thrilling glimpse into a world that is foreign and remote to all but a select, hardy few and well worth the read for the chance to better understand these gorgeous animals.(less)

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Apr 23, 2013 Spencer Seher rated it 5 of 5 stars

What appealed me about this book is the idea of Siberia, which in my mind is a cold desolate forested no-man's land in the forgotten eastern corners of Russia. How scary it would be to encounter an apex predator waiting for you in the snow. Plenty of this expansive isolation was described in this book, but it was much more than I expected. Not only was it a murder mystery with the suspect a wild dangerous gigantic tiger that the investigators were trying to understand, but it was a history lesso...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Joshua Balli rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The synopsis of this book seems like this book will be all about a man eating tiger on the rampage, stalking and hunting anyone it can deep in the Russian forest.

While that is a part of that book, in reality there is so much more. This book provides fascinating information on tigers. For example, did you know if you shaved a tiger bald it would still be stripped? Or that tigers are a near mythical beast in Russia? This is the kind of thing you can look forward to learning in this book.

It also g...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Harry Maier rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Vaillant's writing and his ability to wed scientific writings with narrative captivated me in his, The Golden Spruce. I've been waiting for several years to read this account of the hunt of a tiger in a remote region of eastern Russia. The narrative explores the Amur Tiger, a species which has survived from the paleo-anthroprocene era, and which has evolved with human beings through the millennia. In this case, it follows the story of Tiger who "doesn't get made, but gets even" with a hunter who...more

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Jan 30, 2013 John rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A stunningly written true story about hunting a man-eating tiger, and tigers in Eastern Russia in general. From the very first pages I was drawn into book. Vaillant taps into the drama of a tiger stalking prey in a wonderful way. In between episodes of the action, Valliant substitutes a tremendous amount of information about Eastern Russia, about life there after the fall of communism, and about tigers. The extra information never felt extraneous, in fact quite the opposite. It richly enhanced t...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Terry rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

John Vaillant does a magnificent job of weaving politics, history, geography, socio-economics, biology, ethnography, natural history, ecology and several other fields into this true story of a man-eating tiger in far eastern Siberia. The book reads like a taut mystery. I learned a great deal about Russia and the difficulty of managing the quickly disappearing natural resource of the "Boreal Jungle", as Vaillant terms the once-immense far eastern forests of Russia. The Amur Tiger (one of 6 sub-sp...more

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Nov 07, 2012 Arlene rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"The tiger will see you a hundred times before you see him once." —Taiga hunter

In the boreal Siberian forests (the taiga), mighty creatures roam. Siberian tigers, the world's largest cats, rule "Mother Taiga" with mystical, physical power like Russian tsars of old. In a remote area near the end of the Trans-Siberian Railway, a part of the country more geographically tied to China than to Moscow, humans co-exist with these massive creatures in a push-me, pull-you struggle between tiger preservati...more

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Nov 04, 2012 Erin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nearly everything about Tiger is “incredible,” in the sense of hard to believe, remarkable, and extraordinary. The book perfectly matches form to content, as the subject, the Amur (or Siberian) tiger defies easy understanding, and the form, a meandering blend of history, geography, biography and anthropology, likewise resists categorization.

I found myself captivated by the narrative through-line, the story of a particular tiger and the people he eats. A story that probes why this tiger hunts the...more Nearly everything about Tiger is “incredible,” in the sense of hard to believe, remarkable, and extraordinary. The book perfectly matches form to content, as the subject, the Amur (or Siberian) tiger defies easy understanding, and the form, a meandering blend of history, geography, biography and anthropology, likewise resists categorization.

I found myself captivated by the narrative through-line, the story of a particular tiger and the people he eats. A story that probes why this tiger hunts the people he does, and whether and how to assign blame for the attacks that take place (both person on tiger and tiger on person). Indeed John Vaillant (the author) castigates humans and their rapacious greed for meat and fur, while nevertheless addressing the systemic economic and social factors that make poaching not only viable, but necessary for (some) poachers survival. I was no less captivated by the meandering side plots of Russian-Chinese relations, Russian settlement, taiga geography (the Boreal-Jungle! how rich a descriptor), and eco-animal history. And perhaps most taken with the poetic descriptions of the tiger and his habitat, descriptions that truly “captured” the tiger in his size, majesty and awe.

That the titular Tiger in this story is a protagonist might strike some readers as a stretch, he receives no internal or focalized narrative voice, and yet, the reader has little doubt about his motivations, his affective responses to situations, we feel - emphatically in my case - for this tiger. I mourned his death, if not in an of itself, than for its necessity.

The epilogue to the book, too, is remarkable. Affecting again in its description of current conservation efforts and the impediments they encounter, in particular, the admission of tiger ‘farms’ a notion made deeply disturbing precisely because Vaillant has done such tremendous work in exploring the majesty, beauty and indeed the humanity of the tiger.

So this part ought to be troubling - that I feel so deeply for the tiger because Vaillant makes him out to be human - so let me nuance that by pointing out that the text similarly confuses the border between the human and the animal, arguing for the animality of humans, to the point that the biology of the species matters far less than the actions it takes: both humans and animals can claim humanity in the sense of generosity, empathy and remorse, while both humans and animals can also animalistic in their appetites, instinctual reactions, and callous disregard for the existence of others.

Truly a remarkable work, and one that I think I’m ready to name the best so far in 2011. Strongly urge you to get to the library to get a copy of this book.(less)

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Sep 23, 2012 Shari Morehouse rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was a complete departure from my usual reading. First of all it is non-fiction. I know I should read more non-fiction but I’m just not interested in it. Secondly, it’s a book about animals, and I’m not really an animal person. But this was a choice by my book club so I had to read it.

The book is a true life tale about a man-eating tiger that terrorizes a village in Russia and the team of men sent out to kill it. It’s told in kind of a revolving story style. One chapter about the man th...more

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May 22, 2012 Nancy Newcomer rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is the true story about the hunting of a fearsome man-eating Siberian (Amur) tiger in the region of Priorye in the far eastern edge of Siberia in 1997. But additionally, it is about the people (natives and Russians) who eek out a living there, the post-perestroika policies of Russian rulers and their effect on the environment, the interdependencies of hunters and their prey and much more. Vaillant is a master of creative non-fiction, who hones a sense of suspense and tension that keeps...more This book is the true story about the hunting of a fearsome man-eating Siberian (Amur) tiger in the region of Priorye in the far eastern edge of Siberia in 1997. But additionally, it is about the people (natives and Russians) who eek out a living there, the post-perestroika policies of Russian rulers and their effect on the environment, the interdependencies of hunters and their prey and much more. Vaillant is a master of creative non-fiction, who hones a sense of suspense and tension that keeps the reader turning pages till the end.
At the heart of the story are three characters (a fourth might be the primeval Taiga forest itself.) First is the tiger, a 450-pound, nine-foot long Amur male which can leap up to twelve feet at a time at furious speeds. Second, is Vladimir Markov, an unemployed logger living in a shack in the forest and hunting/poaching to get by. He has an encounter with the tiger (possibly stealing meat from a kill), and shoots it in the leg, wounding it. Third is Yuri Trush, a former Russian military man, now head of Inspection Tiger, a regional organization devoted to protecting the tigers and getting rid of poachers who kill and sell the animals to the Chinese over the nearby Manchurian border.
The disappearance/murder of Markov is reported to Trush and he sets out for the hunter’s rough cabin with his team and their dogs. What they find is chilling. A tiger had followed Markov’s scent to his cabin and lay in wait for his return for three days. The tiger’s tracks circled around and around the cabin, there was tiger blood on the door, everything with Markov’s scent on it had been chewed and obliterated. He waited, lying out in the open, in temperatures 30- 40º below zero F., for Markov’s return. When Markov did arrive, the end was swift and appallingly brutal. Blood in the snow, clothing fragments and a few bits of body were all that remained of the hunter and his dog. That the tiger had stalked his prey, waited and then killed with a vengeance was undeniable. Nothing had been seen like it within memory in the region.
The story of the pursuit of the beast continues through the book but the narrative incorporates much to add interest to the story in historical, political, societal and scientific terms. Yet, I never found the story to drag or lose interest. There are eight pages of color photos to put faces with the characters in the book, including the tiger. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for an armchair adventure with some education woven in. Bring a blanket.(less)

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May 08, 2012 Sandy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

William Blake was not just writing about a Tiger and a Lamb when he penned the poem, "Tiger, Tiger, burning bright"; so, too John Vaillant when he wrote The Tiger. This book's title would lead you to believe that the subject is the tracking of a Primorye amur, but the author reveals a lot more. In exploring the mystery of why this apex predator attacking a human in the Bikin Valley, but in so doing the reader follows the trail of enigmas like how mother Russia transitioned to a post Perestroika...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

John Vaillant, author of The Golden Spruce, has written another exciting, page-turning book. For those of you not familiar with The Golden Spruce, it is about a tree worshipped by the Haida Indians in southeast Alaska. A mutant golden color, this tree had religious and spiritual significance for the Haida people. A renegade man with super physical abilities decided, in his disturbed thinking, that this tree must come down. How the townspeople and Haida Indians dealt with this loss, along with th...more John Vaillant, author of The Golden Spruce, has written another exciting, page-turning book. For those of you not familiar with The Golden Spruce, it is about a tree worshipped by the Haida Indians in southeast Alaska. A mutant golden color, this tree had religious and spiritual significance for the Haida people. A renegade man with super physical abilities decided, in his disturbed thinking, that this tree must come down. How the townspeople and Haida Indians dealt with this loss, along with the history of this man's life, is the subject of this book. Mr. Vaillant also examines the socio-cultural, economic, and history of southeast Alaska as it pertains to the felling of this tree.

In The Tiger, Mr. Vaillant's latest book, he tells the story of a rogue tiger in southeast Russia that, in 1997, turns to man-eating. He also relates the stories of the men the tiger kills and those who hunt the tiger down. In the background of the tiger adventure, is the story of the socio-cultural milieu of Russia before and following Perestroika. Because Primorye, the area in Russia where tigers are found, is so close to China and Korea, we get to learn a lot about the interactions of these countries and their roles in poaching, hunting, and conservation efforts.

The story is a compelling, adventurous page-turner. It starts off with a tiger who is hunting a man named Markov. Markov is one of a few hundred settlers in this very rural Taiga area whose central town is Sobolonye. Once a thriving settlement based on coal production, the coal production is now shut down. Most people resettled to other areas of Russia but a few, mostly hunters, end-of-the-roaders, poachers, and those who loved the land, remained. Markov is a bit of all of these. He is known for his large presence, sense of humor, and charisma. He lived in Sobolonye but kept a cabin deep in the Taiga where he hunted and poached. One day, as Markov and his dog were approaching his cabin, he was attacked by an Amur tiger and killed. He managed to get off one shot, injuring the tiger's paw. The only parts of Markov left were a "hand without an arm and a head without a face".

To give you a bit of background information, Primorye, the name for the Taiga area, gets to forty-five degrees below zero in the winter. "In Primorye, the seasons collide with equal intensity: winter can bring blizzards and paralyzing cold, and summers will retaliate with typhoons and monsoon rains; three quarters of the region's rainfall occur during the summer. This tendency toward extremes allows for unlikely juxtapositions and may explain why there is no satisfactory name for the region's peculiar ecosystem - one that happens to coincide with the northern limit of the tiger's pan-hemispheric range." The Amur tiger is the only one of its species that is able to exist in these arctic conditions. Thousands of species abound here, including the leopard, but the Amur tiger reigns supreme.

The Amur tiger is so big that some want to reclassify it as a completely different species than tiger. It also is able to thrive in areas and conditions that would kill most other tigers. Some Amur tigers grow to nine hundred pounds and are as long as sixteen feet. They are wanderers, looking for sustenance and food wherever it can be found. Because of its size, "Amur tigers must occupy far larger territories than other subspecies in order to meet their need for prey".

Hunger and revenge are not desires that human beings usually experience at the same time, but these primordial drives appeared to merge in the mind and body of this tiger such that one evolved almost seamlessly into the other. The killing and consumption of Markov may have accidentally satisfied two unrelated impulses: the neutralizing of a threat and competitor and an easy meal. But tigers are quick studies and they are, in their way, analytical: there is no doubt that they absorb and remember relevant data and learn from their experiences, accidental or otherwise. If they produce successful results, the tiger will seek to re-recreate those circumstances as closely as possible. Humans, this tiger had discovered (or perhaps had always known), were as easy as dogs to locate and kill. If the wind was wrong and the tiger couldn't smell them, he could still hear them, and that sound carried a compelling new message. Now, a person stepping outside to split a few sticks of kindling might as well be ringing a dinner bell.

It is not unusual for animal attacks to occur in Primorye. However, these attacks are usually impulsive, when for instance a hunter and a tiger accidentally cross paths. The difference with Markov's killing is that the tiger was lying in wait for him at his cabin and when Markov returned, instead of running away which would have been the natural thing for the tiger to do, it attacked him. According to the legends of the indigenous people in the area, Markov must have done something to alienate this tiger. Even the Russian people had never heard of an attack like this and believed that Markov had done something specific to harm this tiger or its offspring. Because of the ferocity of the attack, and its conditions, the Tiger Inspection team was called in.

Russia has a special team of men called Tiger Inspection. They are used to investigate, and if necessary, hunt rogue tigers that are man-eaters. A man named Trush is the head of the inspection team that was called to Primorye after Markov's killing. He determined that the tiger had acted in an organized way and that this was not an impulse killing. It was the Tiger Inspection's duty to find this tiger and kill it. This is one angry and vindictive tiger.

During the course of their hunt, this particular tiger kills two more victims. In one instance it brutalizes the cabin of the victim, ruining all his possessions and dragging a mattress fifty feet in the snow to lie on and await the man's return. The tiger lays on the torn mattress three days waiting for the man's return. There is no chance for the man to even get a shot off. The tiger leaps in the air and tears the man to pieces. All that is left of him is his clothing. The town of Sobolonye is now in a state of terror and its residents are instructed not to leave their homes.

This book carefully details the hunt, the hunters and the victims. It reads like a novel with lots of thrilling adventure and wonderful characterizations. In some ways, it is reminiscent of Krakauer's books. However, Vaillant does a lot with the surrounding issues that relate to the adventure at hand. We learn, for instance, that the Tiger Inspection team is funded by conservation groups in the United States. We are told about the medicinal needs that China has for all parts of the tiger, thus encouraging poaching. They will pay $20,000 U.S. for one tiger. In an area where people live a subsistence lifestyle, this is a windfall. "The brandname Viagra is derived from 'vyaaghra', the Sanskrit word for tiger." All in all, this is a book for the adventurer in all of us.
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Feb 04, 2012 C rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canada-reads

A great Canada Reads 2012 selection!

I guess I've never really given any thought to tigers (any kind of tiger) until this book. The subject matter is extremely interesting as is the setting. Set in south eastern Russia on the Sea of Japan and boarding China, the descriptions of the -40 degree winter weather and the landscape is vivid. It sounds quite magical until the author describes the impoverished living conditions and daily struggles the people deal with just to survive.

This is (mainly) the...more

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Feb 01, 2012 Melanie Peake rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Siberia, eh? We’ve all heard of it, we’ve all got an inkling about how inhospitable it is. This book teaches us that we know nothing. About Siberia, or anything else.
If you require some sort of reality check, a modicum of perspective, or you hanker after being acutely aware of your insignificance, forget Professor Brian Cox and the wonders of the universe “out there”; read this.
Put simply, it’s an account of the Inspection Tiger Unit’s devastating run-in with an injured Amur tiger, that had tur...more

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Nov 19, 2011 Jerome Parisse rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Tiger, by John Vaillant had been on my list of books to read for a while, but because of travel and work, I hadn't got to it yet. I have now read it. It didn't take me very long, which is a good sign. This is non-fiction, but Vaillant is fairly good at creating an interesting narrative out of a true story. In Far East Russia, an Amur (Siberian) tiger has been shot at and wounded by a logger and poacher. The tiger stalks him, kills him and eats him. This sends the Primorye region into turmoil...more The Tiger, by John Vaillant had been on my list of books to read for a while, but because of travel and work, I hadn't got to it yet. I have now read it. It didn't take me very long, which is a good sign. This is non-fiction, but Vaillant is fairly good at creating an interesting narrative out of a true story. In Far East Russia, an Amur (Siberian) tiger has been shot at and wounded by a logger and poacher. The tiger stalks him, kills him and eats him. This sends the Primorye region into turmoil, because in spite of the bitter cold, its inhabitants have to go into the Taiga to make a living. There are a number of tigers living there, but they normally don't attack people. This tiger, however, proved it can be different. Because he was wounded (and indeed many times) he found it hard to hunt, and was starving as a result. After killing and eating his first man, he turned to others and killed a second person from the same village as the first one. This is not new - many similar stories have happened and still happen in India. A search mission was instigated, and the tiger killed. This is all that happens in the book (and not just quite enough for my liking), but Vaillant excels at describing the region, its people, and their drastic living conditions. He also distils very interesting information about Amur tigers, which is why I found the book fascinating. Having said that, after reading the story you don't really want to go there - if you forget about the beauty of the Taiga, the living conditions and the poverty of the people are just staggering. I have always been fascinated by this part of the world and this is one of the reasons why I picked up this book. I'm less sure now, but come to think of it, I'd still go at the drop of a hat. I know the other side of the border, Chinese Manchuria, and as too often happens in China, not much of the original natural environment remains (and forget about tigers or any kind of animal!). Russia is a different story. Vaillant's descriptions of the living conditions and unemployment remind me of a few stays I had to make in Moscow in the years 1989-1990. These were tough times, and I do not have great memories of the place. I just couldn't find anything decent to eat or drink. Quite an experience, but not one I was looking forward to at the time. I understand things are different today. If you are interested in discovering Far East Russia (North West of Vladivostok) and want to know more about the fascinating Amur tiger, then this book is for you. Amur tigers (like most tigers) are heavily poached and their numbers are ever decreasing - this is partly due to the interest and beliefs of the Chinese in regard to the potency of Tiger organs, meat, paws, claws etc. They are ready to pay a fortune for them. This is bad news for the tiger, just as shark fin soup is bad news for sharks. I won't delve more into the lack of environment protection in China - we're all aware of it - but as far as tigers are concerned, The Tiger is a great book.
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Nov 08, 2011 Adam Grossman rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This story is a thought-provoking account of an organization called Inspection Tiger, intent on keeping the wildlife of Russia and humans from harming each other. Yuri Trush is the leader of this organization, with over 20 years of hunting experience under his belt. The story focuses around the death of the huntsman Vladimir Markov. An Amur tiger who wants revenge rounds off this cast of insistent adventurers. My initial thoughts on this book were that it was too lengthy and dull. While these th...more

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