The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Vintage Departures) by John Vaillant (Epub)

Description

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.

User’s Reviews

Review “Magnificent. . . . Suspenseful. . . . The Tiger offers readers a shiver-inducing portrait of a predator.”—San Francisco Chronicle“Mesmerizing . . . a blistering good tale, stocked with fascinating characters, none more compelling than the tiger itself . . . the adventure book of the year.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer“A masterpiece. . . . What elevates The Tiger from adventure yarn to nonfiction classic is Vaillant’s mastery of language.” —Outside “A riveting story.” —The Washington Post“Brilliant . . . A tale of astonishing power and vigor . . . Read this fine, true book in the warmth, beside the flicker of the firelight. Read it and be afraid. Be very afraid.”— Simon Winchester, The Globe and Mail (Toronto) “[A] riveting story . . . Vaillant’s book teaches a lesson that humankind desperately needs to remember: When you murder a tiger, you not only kill a strong and beautiful beast, you extinguish a passionate soul.”—Washington Post “[An] epic story. . . . A travelogue about tiger poaching in Russia’s far east opens up a new genre . . . [the] conservation thriller.”—Nature “If ever a nonfiction author has used the techniques of fiction any better to recount a real-life narrative, it is difficult to imagine who that author would be. . . . Think of Vaillant as a younger version of John McPhee, but on steroids.” —The Seattle Times “Riveting, often chilling. . . . A remarkable, thoroughly researched, informative chronicle that will appeal to readers interested in the conservation of wildlife.”—Providence Journal “Nonfiction as riveting as any detective story. . . . Vaillant sets the stage for an epic encounter that unfolds dramatically and inexorably, climaxing in a stunning encounter.”—Christian Science Monitor “An extraordinary book, bringing vividly to life this rare and terrifying creature and the men who are setting their lives at stake every day in a barely civilized part of the world. This is a real-life adventure story that is rarely encountered.”—The Washington Times “A remarkable and thoughtful account of a distant place where man and animal meet with fatal consequences.”—Richmond Times Dispatch “Told with passion and deep knowledge of the history cultures, folk tales, flora and fuana of this part of the world . . . The Tiger has the pace and precision of a spy thriller.”—Waterbury Republican-American

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ Siberian tigers hunt bears. That’s how badass they are. Okay, but why should you read a book about a search for a man-eating Amur tiger, the world’s largest land predator, in the most remote parts of the earth? Because it’s one of the best damn books you’ll ever read, that’s why. And in the process, you’ll learn about Russian history, Communism, Russian-Chinese relations, Siberian tundra and taiga, tiger lore, perestroika, tiger physiology, the Afghan war, poaching, black markets, being a nature warden, extinction, duty, vengeance and survival. Vaillant’s sorcery is in his ability to take you inside the head of the hunted villagers, the hunters, and the Amur tiger, as if you are there. The whole thing reads like a thriller, and yes, you will probably stay up way too late reading it. I came away with a deeper appreciation of the majesty of nature and our place in it as current top predator.

⭐ Let me start by saying that I really, really wanted to like this book. It was highly recommended and has great reviews. But it was… not what I expected.Don’t get me wrong, this book is superbly well written. But I was expecting a reasonably straightforward tale about revenge and survival in the Siberian taiga. And there are elements of that throughout the book. But the story of a man eating tiger and its pursuit by Russian game officials is sparsely scattered through pages upon pages where the author meditates on ecology, history, Russian politics, paleohistory, and even existential philosophy.Now, I have pretty broad interests, and I’m happy to read about all the above subjects when I’m in the mood. But they are not what I was hoping for when I picked up this book.In fact, you could toss out all the pages pertaining to the actual tiger attack and investigation and still have a pretty big book left over. In many respects, this book isn’t even really about a tiger attack at all– it’s a lengthy meditation on history and philosophy, with a few spatterings of the actual story scattered here and there.I can read a book on philosophy or history with little difficulty, but I found myself positively slogging through The Tiger. It took me quite a long time to finish it, and there were times when reading it felt like a chore.Imagine if you picked up a book about one particular shipwreck, looking forward to reading the harrowing accounts from the survivors, but you have to read through hundreds of pages about ship construction, maritime lore, international politics, and indigenous philosophy first.Very well written, and the author is clearly extremely intelligent, but it just wasn’t what I was looking for in this book. The two star rating reflects the mental exhaustion and boredom I feel after finally finishing it.

⭐ I’ve always been fascinated with stories of life in harsh environments and I love mysteries, spy novels, and historical fiction. When the BBC ran a brief piece on the series of events recounted in this book, it seemed like a good time to take a break from my reading routine and I was not at all disappointed. The book is an amazing account of both the impact of political and economic change wrought by perestroika and its impact on both the human and animal populations of the far East of Russia, and especially the Amur tigers which are unique to that area. The book manages to weave very complex discussion of geopolitical and economic events into the retelling of the events leading up to the death of a hunter/trapper/poacher and the subsequent investigations and tracking down of a man-eating tiger. By the end of the book one can only feel immense sorrow for all of the characters in the story; not only the people left to fend for themselves in an unforgiving land, and the desperate situation the Amur tigers face as they lose their status as the majestic masters of the wild, as their numbers dwindle due to habitat destruction, poaching, and as their human neighbors slowly lose respect for the tigers’ position as a sacred part of the natural environment all these beings share. As it happens the humans and the tigers in this story share the same fate: They are all in decline and it’s a tragedy of monumental proportion. All in all the author has done an amazing job of telling this tale with respect and empathy for all the players, and this book is well worth a careful read.

⭐ This book is an exciting true story that seems impossible to put down at times. The Tiger that is being hunted by and hunting man is a complex individual with motives that seem both rational and moral when analysed by the scientists and people who live among them. The Tiger only hunts the individuals who hurt him or his family or pose an active threat to him. Tigers have existed for thousands of years next to men who respect them and accept their right to live and hunt to survive. The tigers have lived peacefully among the men who have refused to hunt or harm them.By the end of this book you will support efforts to save the Amir tiger from extinction. The welfare of the tiger is a significant indication of the health of the society which surrounds him.

⭐ Tigers are iconic. You don’t need to explain what a tiger is. It’s one of the most charismatic animals on earth, and one of the most famous. This book is written for someone who does not know what a tiger is. The writer piles on pages and pages of the hyperbolic, florid language to tell us what we already know. He refers to the tiger’s canines as “sentient weapons.” No, they’re just really big teeth. He refers to a battle between a tiger and a boar. “The fight on the Amba was to the death and, in spite of the odds, the young tiger prevailed, motivated, apparently, by spite alone.” Really? How can you tell when a tiger is fighting out of spite. I literally laughed out loud at this: “To end a person’s life is one thing; to eradicate him from the face of the earth is another. The latter is far more difficult to do, and yet the tiger had done it, had transported the young man beyond death to a kind of carnal oblivion.” No. The cat killed the man. The end.I vacillated between annoyance and pity. Dude, you are trying WAY too hard. The overall effect is of someone who is trying to impress us. For instance, each chapter begins with an epigraph, which is one of my pet peeves. These do nothing to enlighten us. It’s a way of saying “Look how much I read!” He even includes the source books for the epigraphs in the bibliography, probably to pad it out. He mentions Odysseus and Ahab in passing once for no apparent other than impressing us with his reading habits.It wasn’t until the end that I realized that he is deliberately deceiving us. The book takes place in the far east of Russia. He recounts conversations with the locals, so I assumed he speaks Russian. At the end there’s A Note on Translation, in which we find out he had a translator. There is NO mention of a translator in the book. He purposely makes it seem he is having these conversations, when in fact he was a bystander. Furthermore, the quotes we see in the book are from recordings he made, which were translated by two other translators. He then “retooled” the translations. It is normal to use a translator, of course, but to (I’ll say it) hide mention of this until the very end and not even have the courtesy to include the guy as a character is unethical.I could go on, but I have no desire to write or think about this book ever again. Watch the movie, “Conflict Tiger,” from which this book borrows heavily.

⭐ The prose is thick with novelistic touches, which does its trick of drawing you in to this intense tale of a man-eating tiger that terrorizes the back woods of far eastern part of Russia. The book is at its best when it sticks closely to the main players and the plight of its people who live well below the poverty levels. They do not live they merely survive. The author goes in depth about the area’s history in political back story, as well as the ecological, and socio-economical. These parts of the book can be tedious when all you want to do is dive back into the core story of survival and tiger hunting. The detailed information the author provides on these majestic Amur tigers is fascinating. They are the largest tiger species, some males grow to be as big as 900 lbs.The story eventually kicks in to high gear when Moscow gives the greenlight to hunt down the man-eating tiger. In these parts of the book it recalls the frenzied mob of amateur fishermen going after the shark in Jaws. The climactic confrontation between the tiger and the protagonist of the book is nothing short of cinematic. It’s some exciting stuff.Incidentally, Hollywood may be getting closer to translating this book to the screen. Brad Pitt had been attached to star with Darren Aronofsky directing many years ago. They now have a new director attached (Michaël R. Roskam – The Drop). I hope they do the book justice.

⭐ I only read nonfiction occasionally and this book was recommended to me by my son, who lives in Alaska. He read it based on the recommendation of a friend who is an Arctic Biologist that had visited Pacific Russia regarding some Arctic Research and learned of the Amur Tiger issues.It was a very good book to read for many reasons beyond the story of this tiger. The explanations of living conditions in Russia from the 1980s through 1997 are extremely important to provide the background of the environmental and economic problems that Russia has been dealing with poorly since the breakup of the USSR. The author also touches on several other dilemmas that Russians face in their Pacific region, such as the nearby booming economies of China, South Korea and Japan and the lack of vision from Moscow for their future. Past attempts by the USSR to wipe out native peoples cultures, governmental corruption, and outdated laws and processes are all woven into the fabric of this story. This book should be on the reading list for college biology, ecology and Russian History classes.

⭐ I’ve spent a lot of time reading stories by Jim Corbett who spent most of his life hunting man eating leopards and tigers in Northern India and in the foothills of the Himalayas and I still re-read those tales with just as much interest and suspense, with new awareness of detail, that I might have missed with prior readings. I was aware that Siberian tigers existed in Russia but I knew little or nothing about them.Mr. Vaillant’s “The Tiger” was a great book, a real page turner. It is so important for a reader, and particularly a hunter who is interested in these big cats, to understand not just the nature and intelligence of the cat but how it will use its environment to hunt people as opposed to its regular game.Mr. Vaillant presented his reader with information on Russian history and policy from the Czars to the present to explain how forces in history have shaped Russia’s Far East and its population and how the physical and social environments of the indigenous tribes and others who have settled in those rugged lands and who have had to deal with dangerous wild life, have evolved and survived.A simple quick review does not give this book the justice it deserves and I would recommend it for every person who loves to hunt, who might enjoy true stories of man eaters and the hunt for dangerous game and particularly for those whose interests lie within conservation of endangered wild life. Five Stars and if there were 6, I’d give it that rating.

⭐ I loved this book. I read an excerpt of it in a magazine and I was hooked. I bought it and read it in a few days. It’s a great window into an animal and a part of the world that I didn’t know anything about but found fascinating. It’s years later and I still think about the environment and characters in this book, and the atmosphere the author created in this story. The book is for anyone looking for a great read – a great story well told.

⭐ What a gem this is! A fascinating story not only about tigers, but history, psychology, biology, geology,geography, ecology. This book has it all. In addition to being suspenseful and terrifying, the author provides so much related information that I feel compelled to read it again, and do some of my own research. It would make a great movie!

Keywords

Free Download The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Vintage Departures) in Epub format
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Vintage Departures) Epub Free Download
Download The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Vintage Departures) 2011 Epub Free
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Vintage Departures) 2011 Epub Free Download
Download The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Vintage Departures) Epub
Free Download Ebook The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Vintage Departures)