I think just about anyone could benefit from reading the first four chapters of this book. This offers a refreshing, biological-based look at trauma and its after-effects, while dispelling many of the myths that surround trauma and PTSD in Western psychology today. This is a book that actually could change certain peoples' lives for the better. In dreams, mythical stories, and lore, one universal symbol for the human body and its instinctual nature is the horse. ... When Medusa was slain two things emerged from the body: Pegasus, the winged horse, and Chrysaor, a warrior with a golden sword. ... The sword symbolizes absolute truth, the mythic heroes ultimate weapon of defense. It conveys a sense of clarity and triumph, of rising to meet extraordinary challenges, and of ultimate resourcefulness. The horse signifies instinctual grounding, while wings create ... an image for rising above earthbound existence." (p. 66) In a witty and amusing narration, the author breaks the fear that a kid could feel toward a fierce animal like a tiger. It was portrayed as an enormous, giant creature that funnily takes up most of the space in the kitchen and dining room of the little girl's house. Yet it was (the tiger) funny, friendly and-somehow-polite till it left their home. I have been meaning to return to Peter Levine's work since I was first introduced to him in one of my clinical classes during my MSW program. I remember being annoyed with his theory at the time, arguing with my therapist that it felt belittling to me, the idea that our deepest felt emotions can be boiled down to our "reptilian brain". At the time, I don't think I really even understood it. At the time, I was reading it in reference to working with other people, not myself. My walls were high against any mention that my anxiety had deeper roots beyond my own rationalizing. 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.

This ancient, tenuous relationship between man and predator is at the very heart of this remarkable book. Throughout we encounter surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters, and how early Homo sapiens may have fit seamlessly into the tiger’s ecosystem. Above all, we come to understand the endangered Siberian tiger, a highly intelligent super-predator that can grow to ten feet long, weigh more than six hundred pounds, and range daily over vast territories of forest and mountain. The augmenting material is every bit as interesting. For example there is this about Russia's far Eastern wilderness known as the Taiga: One of THE first picture books that I ever read as a child. It was one of the books that inspired me to become an illustrator! But a tiger is a very big animal, with a simply enormous appetite. Although he sits very nicely at the kitchen table, and waits politely to be offered the sandwiches, the cakes, the buns and then the biscuits, each time he scoffs the lot! And when he is offered a cup of tea, he not only drinks it all, but also all the milk in the milk jug. Then he looks round to see what else he can find.

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After he has left, Sophie’s mummy notices what a mess there is, and oh dear, Sophie can’t have her bath either because there is not a drop of water left! Sophie’s daddy comes home and they both explain that there is no food because a tiger had eaten it all. Not to worry, daddy says, they can all go out and have a meal in a cafe. It sounds like the teaser for a trashy thriller but this story really happened. The Tiger is the story of a rogue tiger and it's man-eating ways. Second bit of true infromation. Tigers are missing what is the tiger version of the collarbone. This allows them to jump really far. An Indian tiger can gain the height of a Asian Elephant quite easily.

I enjoyed the supplementary information - for me it was all relevant enough, and interesting enough. It contained loads of interesting information specific to tigers, but was a also a little broader, bringing in similarities and differences between tigers and other animals - wolves, the Amur leopard, brown bears. There was a lot of specialist research on Amur tigers explained. There was also a lot about the people involved - very detailed biographies of, in some cases, their entire lives. This included the victims of the tiger, their families, other relevant people living in the same towns and the tiger hunting team members. This all added to the greater context, but was perhaps the one aspect that was taken a but far for me. Having said all that, I know other readers found there was too little of the story and too much of the context. To paraphrase Dostoevski in Notes from the Underground; no one can live without being able to explain to themselves what is happening to them, and if one day they should no longer be able to explain anything to themselves, they would say they had gone mad, and this would be for them the last explanation left. Not so incidentally, if ever a nonfiction author has used the techniques of fiction any better to recount a real-life narrative, it is difficult to imagine who that author would be.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.