A superb book -- hyper-intelligent, wonderfully well-written, with a great cast, both human and animal, and at its heart, the amazing and truly chilling story of one tiger's winter campaign of murderous revenge. Tigers, like sharks, are solitary hunters existing from one kill to the next—exercising abstract thinking in the process. Lizzie Stewart has written (and drawn!) such a wonderful story - I can't really say any more than that! It brings out the importance of imagination and seeking for things, and the magic that all creates. Plus Jeff is really cool, too! David Wood, who was once called The National Children’s Dramatist by The Times, is responsible for the adaptation and direction of this musical play. He is also known for his stage adaptations of Roald Dahl’s work. Judith knows about dangerous people who come to your house and take people away. She was told as a young child that her father could be grabbed at any moment by either the Gestapo or the SS - he was in great danger. So I don’t know whether Judith did it consciously or not - I wouldn’t want to go there - but the point is he’s a jokey tiger, but he is a tiger”.

It isn't surprising that the reflections pertaining to the tiger's umwelt herein are in general accordance with those expressed in the book "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" by Frans de Waal, even those in the book "The Elephant Whisperer" by Lawrence Anthony, and no doubt others. We are all cut from the same cloth, and the ‘all too human’ behavior of man is ‘all too animal.’The Great Patriotic War had scarcely concluded before the USSR began rebuilding and retooling for the Cold War. While Soviet engineers and scientists perfected the now ubiquitous AK-47 and tested the country’s first nuclear weapons, the general population reeled from the catastrophic synergy generated by six years of war and the seemingly endless nightmare of Stalin’s psychotic reign. During the two decades prior to Markov’s birth, the Soviet Union lost approximately 35 million citizens—more than one fifth of its population—to manufactured famines, political repression, genocide, and war. Millions more were imprisoned, exiled, or forced to relocate, en masse, across vast distances. With the possible exception of China under Mao Zedong, it is hard to imagine how the fabric of a country could have been more thoroughly shredded from within and without.”

The Tiger is the sort of book I very much like and rarely find. Humans are hard-wired to fear tigers, so this book will attract intense interest. In addition to tiger lore and scalding adventure, Vaillant shows us Russia’s far east and its inhabitants, their sometimes desperate lives interwoven with the economics of poaching and the politics of wildlife conservation. I was startled to learn about the zapovedniks and Russia’s primary place in global conservation. This is a book not only for adventure buffs, but for all of us interested in wildlife habitat preservation." - Annie Proulx Sounds pretty promising, right? Nice little tale of terror, neatly wrapped up in a 500 word article for Outside or National Geographic, maybe with some pretty pictures and maps. Well, this book is more than that. It is panoramic in its scope, covering everything from ethnobiology to history to economics to political science to spiritualism to wildlife conservation. The author gives a vivid picture of a society unlike many others - a cold, forbidding, primal place, where man is not at the top of the food chain, and where man lives or dies on his relationship to his local environment.Peter A. Levine received his Ph.D. in medical biophysics from the University of California at Berkeley, and also holds a doctorate in psychology from International University. He has worked in the field of stress and trauma for over 40 years and is the developer of “Somatic Experiencing.” The suggestion that community played a role in healing trauma and that trauma is a natural reaction to bad experiences is also a important element. That a physical connection/grounding plays a role in restoring a wandering spirit (a shamanic image) is interesting. Mostly, I tend agree with Levine, looking at the trauma directly and reliving it is at best not helpful (his clinical practice strongly affirmed this view), at worst, only making matters worse. Tigers are absolutely fascinating. Despite them doing very little when I spot them at zoos, I could still spend hours marvelling at their beauty and poise... Lizzy Stewart’s There’s a Tiger in the Garden is another spectacular book about a little girl who unexpectedly meets a tiger... Her grandma warns her that there is a tiger in her garden but Nora doesn’t believe her so she sets off to find out for herself!

I can't imagine any of the sessions he describes are actually that helpful. I would love to see the long term outcomes of all his patients. Regarding Russian history in understanding human impact, you will see the conflicts and contradictions of heavy handed human ecosystem destruction hand in hand with conservation measures. A battle in itself with our blind weedy species weighing ever more on one end of the teeter-totter. way through. I am left wondering what exactly this 'energy' is that Levine writes about. If it is indeed some sort of energy, then can we find a scanner to find it? Or is it instead not an increase in any type of energy per se (like there is no more water in a pipe system) but that the body isn't regulating the energy any better (the valves are out of sync). The first is that if it is indeed an increase in some form of energy then we can look for it and find it in scans. If it is not a form of energy, then we cannot scan for it. And searching for biomarkers will prove impossible by Levine's own model as he writes that the symptoms in the body manifest in an incredible diverse manner that renders any sort of attempt at screening null. What we have, then, is a wide butterfly net of a label of trauma. The Tiger also counts as a supreme example of true-crime writing driven by wide-angle empathy and compassion. Some readers may choose to shelve it, not among cosy wildlife yarns, but with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.Although my biggest criticism of the book doesn't have to do, necessarily, with what he says but rather what he avoids saying. Throughout there are no explanations of the functions of the endocrine system which plays a very big role in the confrontation of extreme stress. And he only describes the nervous system in very vague, nebulous terms, avoiding any specific neurological explanations of trauma. However the author herself denies this. She first thought of the story after visiting a zoo with her three year old daughter, telling it many times over and over for about a year. Then she wrote it all down, and created the careful quirky illustrations. By all means read Vaillant's magnificent book about the animal: The Tiger offers readers a shiver-inducing portrait of a predator that has been revered - and feared - like no other animal.