Rabinowitz has been an explorer and an expert in setting up nature reserves in other places, but he was amazed to find the hunters dealing in body parts of rare animals, mostly in trade with China for salt. In expeditions by foot that sound as tough as the ones Victorian explorers had to face, he was able to come to terms with hunters, planning a park system that would encourage hunters to benefit from the study and the conservation of wildlife, rather than the commercial disposal of it; such a system ran, at least partially, on salt as a reward to the former hunters, making wildlife more valuable alive than dead. He also had to try to deal with the bureaucracy of the Myanmar government, which seems stranger than most such institutions. Strangely, Christian proselytizing in the area, teaching that all animals were placed here for our use, was a serious obstacle to be overcome.
It is often his attempts to connect with those of other cultures that are the most moving parts of this book. For Rabinowitz, connecting has not been easy. He still has the stutter that crippled him as a child, and his book has flashbacks of his upbringing and the difficulty of dealing with parents whom he blamed for it and who blamed themselves. He has openly described the difficulties being an explorer has posed within his marriage, and the strain between him and his wife caused by his absences and of the miscarriages they had to go through. The journey through Myanmar was for him also a personal journey dealing with his childhood, being a husband, and becoming a father. He succeeded in sparking a wildlife reserve that is something we can all profit from, but his success in fighting his own personal demons is laid out here as well. With good humor, astute observation, passion, and candor, Rabinowitz has provided a book of exotic travel, and something far more.
