The Tiger
A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
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4.2 • 239 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A gripping story of man pitted against nature’s most fearsome and efficient predator. This "travelogue about tiger poaching in Russia’s far east opens up a new genre ... [the] conservation thriller" (Nature).
Outside a remote village in Russia’s Far East a man-eating tiger is on the prowl. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s murdering them, almost as if it has a vendetta. A team of trackers is dispatched to hunt down the tiger before it strikes again. They know the creature is cunning, injured, and starving, making it even more dangerous. As John Vaillant re-creates these extraordinary events, he gives us an unforgettable and masterful work of narrative nonfiction that combines a riveting portrait of a stark and mysterious region of the world and its people, with the natural history of nature’s most deadly predator.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The grisly rampage of a man-eating Amur, or Siberian, tiger and the effort to trap it frame this suspenseful and majestically narrated introduction to a world that few people, even Russians, are familiar with. Northeast of China lies Russia s Primorye province, "the meeting place of four distinct bioregions" taiga, Mongolian steppes, boreal forests, and Korean tropics and where the last Amur tigers live in an uneasy truce with an equally diminished human population scarred by decades of brutal Soviet politics and postperestroika poverty. Over millennia of shared history, the indigenous inhabitants had worked out a tenuous peace with the Amur, a formidable hunter that can grow to over 500 pounds and up to nine feet long, but the arrival of European settlers, followed by decades of Soviet disregard for the wilds, disrupted that balance and led to the overhunting of tigers for trophies and for their alleged medicinal qualities. Vaillant (The Golden Spruce) has written a mighty elegy that leads readers into the lair of the tiger and into the heart of the Kremlin to explain how the Amur went from being worshipped to being poached. Photos.
Customer Reviews
Great read, a little too long, but worth it
I really enjoyed this book. It’s crazy that it’s based on a true story. Much of this book is going to be about life in far east Russia, and the psychology of the people and tigers who live there. If you think this is going to be non-stop action, you’ll be disappointed. I really enjoyed much the background to this story. Even though I feel like this book was well written, I do think the book could have been cut by 80 or so pages. All that being said, I would still recommend it.
The Tiger
A great true story about the last frontier on our globe. A story so full of characters and a country yet so unknown and hostile. A must for all lovers of great stories of survival and "an eye for an eye" stories. I started the book and finished it without break.
Incredible detailed account of an incredible story
The pace is perfect, the facts are fascinating and detailed, and the story itself is absolutely enthralling. This is not just a book for tiger enthusiasts but for anyone in need of a good read. Highly recommended does not do it justice. It is simply a must read.