Tigers are not just an endangered species in India and Thailand and Nepal, writes field naturalist and safari guide Ives. Their goose (so to speak) is pretty much cooked. Tigers are awesome beasts, and for a naturalist such as Ives they are near mythic creatures—ancient, solitary, living on the margins. Ives knew that they once roamed the subcontinent in great numbers. But what was their current lot? Did their protected areas really give them a chance at survival, or were they doomed by circumstance? Ives takes up with three very different souls—a legendary champion of the tiger; a violent, inspiring, globe- trotting naturalist; and a tiger dilettante (like Einstein was a dilettante of physics), all of whom offer Ives little more than a tale of woe for the tiger's chances: Its habitat is too far gone. An American born safari leader, Ives knows the tiger's terrain, and the Western imagination, well enough to convey a landscape rife with dark magic—of Rajput castle, ghost forests, and panoramas of romance and antiquity. He wears his naturalist's training lightly, offering throwaway comments like this one, along a riverbank: ``There are two distinctly different . . . deer hoofmarks, the smaller belonging to chital, the larger either to sambar or to the very rare swamp deer.'' For all the story's subcurrent of despair, Ives has managed to infuse it with a bouncy, adventurous air, full of daring episodes, reckless happenings, even a love story, not to mention run-ins with the big guy himself. Still and all, a sense of doom hovers everywhere. This isn't so much a caution as it is an elegy—beautifully etched, picaresque even, but a sadder song for all that. One just has to trust and respect a guy who lets you know up front that you won't be seeing any tigers on his tiger safaris.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-47816-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1995
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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