As at least one other commentator on Amazon.com has pointed out, this book is much more than just a story about Amur Tigers in Russia’s far east.
Vaillant writes persuasively about the horrible time all Russians had to live through during the catastrophic transition from Soviet communism to jungle capitalism of the 1990s and 2010s–both isms anti-human in their deranged ideology. Personally, I have learned more about this upheaval in Russian history than I had learned before, and I learned a lot if only because I grew up in Poland during the communist era and went to college there and got a degree from Cracow University, where I met Russian students and have recently followed closely the civil war in Ukraine.
I have approached the book with high expectations because, before I read “The Tiger,” I had already studied “The Golden Spruce,” a magnificent account of what happened in British Columbia when that unique tree was suddenly cut down and everybody was shocked. Both books reveal the author’s informed view of the nature of Nature. Vaillant is neither a naive environmentalist nor, of course, a green thug pushing a corporate agenda. His philosophy of nature is much more nuanced. You need to read the book, though, to really appreciate it.
The author’s style is highly polished and eminently readable. (He still, though, uses the faulty predication error: “the reason … is because,” but that is the only such flaw I have found.)
Well, I couldn’t believe it: my review has been censored by some anonymous Amazon apparatchik. I wrote a response, but the email address is a no-reply address. Here’s my response:
To: Anonymous Amazon Censor:
You wrote:
“Hello, we couldn’t post your review because it doesn’t meet our community guidelines. Please edit and resubmit your review. Before you do, make sure it meets all of our guidelines.”
Really!? How sad and pathetic it is!
No, I am not going to re-read your nauseating “commenting guidelines.” And I am not going to edit and re-submit my review. My review is as publishable as any; it doesn’t violate any sensible guidelines. So I will publish it on my blog and send a copy (with your email) to a popular political-military American blog, where American corporate censors, like you, have no access.
I now have my own evidence of how low Amazon has fallen, more evidence of America’s general decline. You don’t differ much from the censors of the Communist era. Adios, Mr. Amazon apparatchik.
Kaz Dziamka
————————————
Z listu do znajomego:
Ostatnio pochłaniają mnie książki Johna Vaillanta. Nic innego nie czytam.
Przeczytałem już dwie—The Golden Spruce i Tiger. Teraz zamówiłem dwie jego inne książki: Fire Weather i the Jaguar’s Children. Zamówiłem też książkę rosyjskiego podróżnika Arseniewa Dersu Uzala, teraz wręcz legendarnego myśliwego i przewodnika z rejonu dalekiego wschodu Rosji. To o nim nakręcił (chyba w 1975 roku) swój słynny film japoński reżyser Kurosawa (dostępny w napisami w jez. angielskim na YouTubie. W polskiej wersji chyba też.)
Jak taki słynny film uciekł mojej uwadze przed wylotem do Ameryki, nie bardzo rozumiem.
To co mówi Dersu w rozmowach z Arseniewem jest fascynujące. To tak jakbym na nowo słuchał starego Apacza. To fascynujące.
Kaz
======
Fragment jednej recenzji. (Moja jednak sie nie ukazala.)
aruna
5.0 out of 5 stars From umgebung to umwelten of man and tiger – A classic of non fiction. Reviewed in India on October 29, 2019
In this book, John Valliant mentions of ethnologist Jacob Von Uexkull’s concept of umwelt ( an imaginary soap bubble around each creature to represent its own world and when we then step into one of the bubbles our reality is transformed…” Umgebung is the objective relative we live in; but each of us experiences it differently from our own umwelt (subjective reality). This reference in the story is poignant – did the tiger step into the umwelt of its victim to kill it?
The gruesome site where Andrei Markov a tayozhnik (forest dweller) was ….. annihilated by the tiger in a remote taiga (forest) in Russia left the investigators and Markov’s friends or for that matter everyone around shocked and bewildered. Such ferocious brutality against man was unknown. The Inspection Tiger (the team charged to address tiger related issues in the taiga) saw in the evidence an intentional and calculated act; as if the tiger had marked out Markov, dic