Massive, beautiful, clever, and deadly, the tiger has long been an object of fascination, fixed in our collective imagination. In THE TIGER (Vintage, $15), John Vaillant captures this primal awe and brings you into the minds of both a tiger and the hunters who subsist alongside it on the taiga. The book takes place in the village of Sobolonye in the southeastern Primorye region of Russia, which, though bounded by Russia, China, North Korea, and the Sea of Japan, has remained an island of wilderness. In recounting the gripping saga of one tiger’s devastating effect on the people of that region, Vaillant has crafted the perfect nonfiction book—a seamless blend of fact, masterful descriptions of the land and the people, and elegant storytelling.
