Tigers in the Snow

by Peter Matthiessen, Maurice Hornocker (Photographer)

No more than a few thousand tigers survive in pockets of Asia, a continent they once roamed far and wide. The largest of them, the Siberian tiger, is today almost entirely confined to the little-populated Russian Far East, a region that may offer the species' best hope for survival. But the implosion of the Soviet Union intensified poaching and habitat depredation, prompting a group of Russian researchers and U.S. wildlife biologists led by Maurice Hornocker to join forces to stave off extinction.

Peter Matthiessen brings to the Siberian tiger the deep knowledge of and feeling for the natural world that have made classics of his previous books. Accompanying researchers into the field, he allows the reader to participate vicariously in the battle for the tiger's future. Along the way, he tells how the species evolved and evokes its crucial, often totemic role in human cultures and mythologies. He has made of the tiger's dilemma a drama-underscored by Hornocker's one-of-a-kind photographs-that conveys powerfully what a loss to our collective imagination the disappearance of these great cats would be.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Animals, Natural History, Science, Wildlife, Audiobook

208 pages, Paperback

First published February 29, 2000

About the author

Peter Matthiessen is the author of more than thirty books and the only writer to win the National Book Award for both non-fiction (The Snow Leopard, in two categories, in 1979 and 1980) and fiction (Shadow Country, in 2008). A co-founder of The Paris Review and a world-renowned naturalist, explorer and activist, he died in April 2014.

Reviews

[Murray · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely disappointing. Nothing at all like his profound and creative work The Snow Leopard. Just a dry plodding work comprised of facts I could have picked up from Google or a dozen good books on the tiger my local library would have brought in. Its habitat is shrinking, there’s poaching for its beautiful fur and its body parts that are used for medicine, it’s over hunted, etc etc. I could say the same things about the grizzly bear here or the gray wolf in the US. There is nothing new in this information. The book is underwhelming.

The only interesting parts are a short section at the beginning where they track a tiger and another longer bit at the end where they do the same. I’ve never had encounters in the wild, it’s true, but I’ve been face-to-beautiful blazing emerald eyed-face at the wildlife park where I grew up and I’ve had the joy of a tiger cub playfully clawing at my sneaker laces. Those and other experiences left me with vivid lifelong impressions. The book did not.

I so wanted the author to deliver up a mystique surrounding the magnificent tiger. Describe its flaming green eyes, its powerful bound and leap when it hunts, the colors of its fur gleaming in a patch of sunlight in the forest, its muscles rippling as it does that proud, big cat stride in its territory. I will have to find another writer for that.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have great respect for Peter Matthiessen's work and integrity. His writing is quite scholarly and often a little dry, so sometimes it reads like a textbook. Hence my middling rating. Still worth the read, though, especially if you like big cats.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though the writer only made two trips to the Russian far east, each lasting about a week, he managed to write a whole book out of the experience. While that itself would probably be sufficient for a Nat Geo article, consisting of interviews with the locals and wildlife biologists involved in conserving tigers, the core of the book was really about the natural history of this great cat throughout its historical and present range. This most charismatic 'flagship' megafauna species has adapted to a broad range of habitat and climatic conditions all over Asia, and Matthiessen provided a fascinating study of the different tiger subspecies' biology and ecology.

The use of remote cameras in field research was just beginning at the time, and is now widespread. Despite knowing much more about the tiger's requirements and ecology, sadly the situation since then has only gotten worse, with Indochinese and Sumatran populations being particularly hard hit. Although the author never had much luck in sighting them in his journeys, his flair for depicting wilderness landscapes remains top notch, combining with the factual elements to make this short book highly enjoyable and more than just about the Siberian tiger.

[Aart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eén ster voor jeugdsentiment, één ter compensatie van de ongetwijfeld oubollige Nederlandse vertaling en één omdat ik er onlangs achter kwam dat Matthiessen bijkluste als CIA-agent. Verder geen idee waar dit boek heen wil (studieboek, reisverslag, overdenkingen?)

[Shreeram MV · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book provides a glimpse into the history of conservation of the Amur Tiger, along with the allied histories of tiger subspecies across Asia. As some of the other reviews have pointed out, it feels like a text book in a few places. Nevertheless, an interesting read overall.

[Vivek KuRa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read for Tiger Enthusiasts. Peter Matthiessen not only focuses on the Amur aka Siberian Tigers, but also the other extinct and extant Tiger subspecies their Evolutionary history and current distribution etc. Being a fan of Peter Matthiessen's works, I enjoyed this book. If you can tolerate some chapters which are dry and text book like, then this is a good read.

[cypher · Rating 3 out of 5]

the tiger, probably the only thing i like about russia, this animal, and its presence there is only incidental. it's endangered, yes, programs for its conservation and it's still...used for medicine?! how is it possible that in the modern world, that (endangered) tiger is what russia uses for medicine, science in russia is where right now? anyway...this book. is tiger even useful in medicine, many have proven no (take some glucosamine, calm down and understand everything pretty much these days can be synthesised in a lab, just try and stop being selfish people)...russia though...what's to expect, really.
is this a great book about that tiger, not really, but, is it a bad book about that tiger...i'm actually questioning the quality of information the author managed to get from the russian people about this tiger, not the author's fault though, and if he truly felt comfortable saying much about what he saw...it's russia we're talking about, and this tiger is right there...how unlucky.
anyway, this book is probably better as a documentary, in which maybe a guy with a gun was not always by your side or hidden in the bushes playing with the pet tiger (russians think it's ok for this endangered animal to be someone's pet, many have them there, insta is full of russians with pets which should not be pets flexin' their "cool" with this...it's not great, that animal is endangered, not a house cat, but, hey, in the wild it ends up some face cream for his wife and a coat she wears like one time...fantastik), making you think that scenario is great and will lead to a...relevant book on the topic.
yeah, probably better as a documentary.

[Christy · Rating 5 out of 5]

No more than a few thousand tigers survive in pockets of Asia, a continent they once roamed far and wide. The largest of them, the Siberian tiger, is today almost entirely confined to the little-populated Russian Far East, a region that may offer the species' best hope for survival. But the implosion of the Soviet Union intensified poaching and habitat depredation, prompting a group of Russian researchers and U.S. wildlife biologists led by Maurice Hornocker to join forces to stave off extinction.

Peter Matthiessen brings to the Siberian tiger the deep knowledge of and feeling for the natural world that have made classics of his previous books. Accompanying researchers into the field, he allows the reader to participate vicariously in the battle for the tiger's future. Along the way, he tells how the species evolved and evokes its crucial, often totemic role in human cultures and mythologies. He has made of the tiger's dilemma a drama-underscored by Hornocker's one-of-a-kind photographs-that conveys powerfully what a loss to our collective imagination the disappearance of these great cats would be.

[Scott Gillespie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plight of tigers in the wild, the attempts to save the species, and the seeming inevitability of their extinction

The book isn’t what I expected. I thought it would be more about the physiology and mythology of tigers, but it’s chiefly a litany of failures to preserve wildlife. A large part of what I read were accounts of different kinds of tigers over the past century. Every one of these accounts has the words, or words like, “deforestation”, “destruction of habitat”, “unchecked slaughter”, and “extinct.”

This was too difficult a read for me. Honestly, I began skimming chapters toward the end of the book. The horrendous treatment of the tiger by humans. The wholesale butchering of this species typically for greed, vanity, and faux-medicines. The often futile attempts to stop sanctioned and unsanctioned hunters.

The accompanying photographs are very pretty.

The accompanying photographs are very pretty.

[John Fredrickson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is more about the people and parks involved in the preservation of tigers and their habitats than it is about tigers themselves. One definitely gets a sense for some of the magnificence of the animal along the way, but this appears to be incidental to the purpose of the book, which I take to be to incite interest or action in saving these animals and their habitats.

The difficulties involved in maintaining a tiger habitat in proximity to humans is explored, which is exacerbated by the amount of land and prey that are required to sustain a tiger population. The book also delves into the dangers of poaching that arises when a strong marketplace for tiger parts (bone, penis, ...) exists.

[Ellie Dynek · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful combination of beautiful photographs and detailed descriptions that provide tremendous insight into the plight of one of the most beautiful creatures on this Earth.

[Marie Zahnle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Homage to disappearing Siberian tiger.

[Yelena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audio

[Jill Bowman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent book with a lot of stats, but if you’re only going to read one Tiger book the John Valliant book is much more interesting.

[Nathaniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book that's not quite sure if it wants to be a travelogue, a scientific nature documentary, or a collection of quasi-poetic adjectives about mundane experiences, and ultimately settles for being an airy and disjointed collection of flowery prose held together by some gorgeous photography and the author's own overbearing self-satisfaction. Attempts at describing the day to day experience of being on a tiger research expedition are mingled with history of the various species of tiger and more than a few snap judgments about people who happen to disagree with the author, yet none are particularly complete and the entire book feels unfinished and kind of vapid. Ironically, Matthiessen's observations about everyday backwoods Russians circa 2000 (and their disdain for democratic government, among other things) are probably more telling from a modern, "eternal reign of Putin"-era perspective than anything he has to say about tigers; of course, this book being so dated also makes anything he has to say about tigers, most of it taking place up to 25 years ago and all in the present-tense, all the more depressing today.

With that said, Maurice Hornocker's tiger photographs truly deserve praise, and anyone who likes nature photography might want to pick this book up for the right price just for the photos. As an actual reading experience, however, it's fairly marginal, and not for anyone who isn't already a smug, self-satisfied "haute environmentalist" in Matthiessen's mold.

[LibraryCin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1992 in Russia, some American and Russian scientists started a project to study and hopefully save endangered tigers. Many species of tiger have already gone extinct. There wasn’t very much known about tigers because they are so secretive, so studies previously were done by studying their tracks in the snow, which only accounts for part of the year. These scientists started by fitting collars on a few of the remaining tigers in Eastern Russia. They also hoped to work with the local populations to teach them more about tigers and to hopefully bring them onboard to help save the tigers.

I will admit that I skimmed a little bit over sections of the book that described the locations, but when Matthiessen focused on the tigers, I found it very interesting. He also looks at some species of tiger that have already gone extinct and some of the reasons why. This was my first book by him, and I do hope to read more by him focusing on different animals.

[Nate · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book would have benefited greatly from an editor at a publishing firm. It's mostly a collage of random bits of information on tigers, with the author's story loosely spruced in. The author is a researcher, not a writer, and that is quite obvious to the reader since the story lacks any sort of flow.

The book also relies heavily on statistics and estimates that are now dated (mostly coming from the late 1990s). It's not that big of a deal, but it felt wasteful to read about a situation that uses obsolete data. The pictures overall are nice, but it would have been better if there were more of them, and if they always fit the timeline of what was the author was discussing.

I love Siberian tigers, but this book is not worth the purchase or rental other than to briefly flip through the photos included. I'd recommend a recently produced documentary on them instead.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only is the photography beautiful, but Matthiessen really makes you feel like your in Siberian wilderness with him, tracking these majestic creatures. You feel the anticipation and excitement as you track them down in below freezing temperatures, the dread when you discover the poachers have killed yet another one, and just sheer awe when you're finally able to see one.

Besides being a gifted storyteller, Matthiessen also gives the hard facts about the species. You come away from from this with conflicting emotions, feeling inspired and defeated. Inspired because you got to see one awesome picture after another, and defeated because its all too likely they'll become extinct in our lifetime.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a sad detailing of the numbers of tigers left in the wild, by their different territories. Much of the book is about the Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve on the Sea of Japan in eastern Siberia. There, as in other countries, the tigers enjoy an uneasy truce with poor people who need access to the animals and other resources that are reserved for the tigers. As he does in all of his nonfiction works, Matthiessen brings an elegant beauty to his factual account: “One cannot speak for those who live in tiger country, but the vivid presence of Hu Lin, the King, merely knowing that His Lordship is out there in the forest, brings me deep happiness.”

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this book only four stars because it did not serve the intended purpose for me. I was searching for facts about the Amur tiger in in Russian far East but sadly did not really learn anything that I didn't already know. The writing however is absolutely breathtaking! Peter Matthiessen is easily one of the most intuitive nature writers of our time and his message comes across loud and clear: if we want to, we can save the tiger in the wild.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tigers In the Snow by Peter Matthiessen (North Point Press 2000) (599.756). The Amur (Siberian) tiger is the largest of the world's big cats. It is seriously endangered. Peter Matthiessen brings his special eye to the Russian region where the remaining wild tigers live in an attempt to demonstrate how great the loss would be to our collective imaginations if these cats were to became extinct in the wild. My rating: 7/10, finished 2001.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ethnography of the Amur tiger, that reads more like an adventure novel. Yes, the data are now outmoded (which was irrelevant as far as my reasons for reading it), but the book still does a good job of conveying the general habitat and behavior of the tiger, as well as detailing the conservation goals and challenges unique to thst region of Siberia.

[Toffana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had expected this to be more like The Snow Leopard, Matthiessen's master work: a travel journal full of adventure, culture, and philosophical world view. Alas, this describes only the last third of the book. The rest is introductory material and the state of tiger conservation at the time of writing, but still very interesting stuff.

[Mark Hundley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tigers in the wild face likely extinction in all parts of the world, India, Sumatra, Amur. Their territory is disappearing and fragmenting reducing their range and ability to breed. A melancholy book but with beautiful pictures. I love reading Matthiessen.

[Alene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Introduced me to a world I'd love to be part of--animal conservation. I'd especially love to visit that rugged and inhospitable countryside in eastern Siberia and see one of these magnificent animals or enjoy at least trying to spot one.

[Jamil · Rating 3 out of 5]

"When you see a tiger, it is always like a dream." - Ullas Karanth, tiger biologist.

""What will it say about the human race if we let the tiger go extinct?" - Ashok Kumar.

[Hunter Johnson]

Tigers in the Snow by Peter Matthiessen. A too-short look at tiger conservationism.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

When you see a tiger, it is always like a dream. Beautiful photographs, magnificent animal, surprisingly dull book.

[Jonathon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not Matthiessen's best, but it's still a nice, well-written little book.