The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia by Piers Vitebsky, a review from The Christian Science Monitor by Marjorie Kehe.
"I'm an inveterate underliner when I read. To me, it only makes sense ? when you revisit a book, you want to know right away what it was that fascinated you most the first time through. But somewhere in the early chapters of The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia, I quit. I realized that I was underlining almost every sentence. The image that opens the book is as irresistible as it is timeless. 'In the Verkhoyansk Mountains of northeast Siberia, Eveny nomads are on the move,' Vitebsky writes. 'Teams of reindeer pull caravans of sledges down the steep slides of a frozen mountain river. Bells tinkle on the lead reindeer while dogs on short leashes dive closely alongside through the snow like dolphins beside a boat.' It's hard not to be fascinated by a tale like this one. British anthropologist Piers Vitebsky writes of 20 years of visits to the Eveny, a people whose lives have been organized around the cultivation of domestic reindeer for at least a few millenniums." Read the entire Christian Science Monitor review.