GOD BLESS YOU !
GOLDEN


Portrait of a metaphor   May 27, 2000
 21 out of 21 found this review helpful

The tiger remains one of nature's most provocative metaphors for power, independence, grace and spirit, but a world consumed with symbols is hardly noticing as the animal itself sinks slowly toward oblivion.

Now one of the most intuitive nature writers of our recently past century, Peter Matthiessen lends his poet's voice to the desperate effort to save the tiger in "Tigers in the Snow." He makes an eloquent case for enlightened coexistence between humans and tigers, starting in a remote corner of Siberia where the species has staked its last best hope for survival. Their impending extinction, he argues, would not only damage the world's ecology, but also our collective imagination.

"Tigers in the Snow" is more analytical and less lyrical (and far less introspective) than "The Snow Leopard." Mattheissen's fans will find "Tigers" comparable to his 1992 book, "African Silences," a sobering account of the catastrophic depredation of the African landscape and its wildlife, particularly elephants. Indeed, as with many ecological calamities-in-the-making, the causes of the Asian tiger's decline -- hunting, reduction of food supply, man's encroachment and government policies (or lack of them) -- tragically resembles the majestic African elephant's deterioration.


Brings this Historical Region to Life Again   February 17, 2000
 50 out of 53 found this review helpful

This book recounts the story of endangered Siberian Tigers in a grand sweep including their history and the stories of modern scientists, Russian and otherwise, who study them and seek to save them. It's a superb relaxation book, but one also with a strong message. Excellent photography and interspersed historical illustrations add to the books enjoyment. The endpapers map the startlingly short time (1800-2000) in which these Tigers have come to face extinction. Melodic names of Russian scientists, Nikolaev, Shetinin and Yudokov, and regions from Turkmenistan to Kyrgystan found me wondering where I had read of this grand territory before-- in Vladimir Nabokov's grand novel The Gift, of course, whose biologist hero would have known Matthiessen's Tiger subspecies "altaica" from the Altai Range. As if contrapuntal to Matthiessen's book, Nabokov left it uncertain whether his hero (recounted once again this year in a great conservation-sensitive book, Nabokov's Blues) died at the hands of gunfire or the claws of some wild beast. Matthiessen brings this wonderful and little known part of the world to life once again. One can only hope that his book has some sway on the Tigers' ability to find (in Nabokov's words from The Gift once again) "Equality Before the Law in the Animal Kingdom" in its long struggle to survive in spite of man.