Reviews for The Law Relating to Vaccination: Comprising the Vaccination Acts and the Instructional Circu...

The average rating for The Law Relating to Vaccination: Comprising the Vaccination Acts and the Instructional Circu... based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-07-08 00:00:00 Michelle Wright Not what I expected. I expected more of an oral history. The author travelling throughout Siberia and recording the stories of the Shaman. There was some of this. The author did travel Siberia and talk to a few people about Shamanism, but it was few and far between. The pages were filled with history, eg Stalin, Gulag, philosophers quotes, quotes from Russian literature and about Russian authors etc.. and at times it felt like the author had lost her way. Lost her vision of what this book was supposed to be about. In essence, the book has two titles that seem to mean different things to the reader. The Shaman's Coat title made me think this was going to be an up close and personal travelogue chronicling oral Shamanic history. The sub title A Native history of Siberia is what this book really is. Just a history, like many histories that have been written about Russia and Siberia often enough already. I was not looking for another one of those books. Another book hung up on talking about Stalin's treatment of the native peoples, hung up on Dostoyevsky (oh why can't there be one book set in Russia that doesn't feel it needs to quote or mention Dostoyevsky). I wanted to sit in the yurts of the Shaman and listen to their stories through the eyes and ears of this author, Anna Reid, but it happened too infrequently. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a history of Siberia with some Shamanism thrown in to titillate you.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-08-01 00:00:00 Todd Kovilaritch Given the topic, it may be appropriate that this book is sad and thin. Like indigenous peoples all over the world, the natives of Siberia were steamrollered by the cruelties of the modern age. Unlike indigenous peoples elsewhere, however, there seem to be few people, in the country where the various indigenous Siberians now find themselves, who feel at all regretful or wish to record the recollections of the final witnesses to their ancient way of life. Whenever I see a person of European descent (anywhere in the world) dressed up as a native American, or a white Australian in the center of some large world city blowing on a didgeridoo, I stop myself in mid-eye-roll and remember something that is worthwhile is being preserved here, and the implied enthusiasm and reverence of amateur and professional preservers is worthy of respect. But it seems like the native Siberians are a bridge too far – too wild, too remote, too various in their sparse settlements, too victimized by the accidents of murderous modern history. Even though a few hardy new-agers seem interested, you just aren't going to find summer festivals where people dress up like the Buryat, sing Buryat songs, sleep in Buryat yurts. So instead you have this book. The author writes clearly about her long and inconclusive travels, but there are no hidden pockets of optimism. There are no communities or apparently few individuals working to preserve or even record the old ways. Reviving them seems beyond hoping for. Again: a sad book. Perhaps this is why Anna Reid chose to exclude all mention of physicist Richard Feynman from the chapter on the Tuvans (i.e., chapter 4). Feynman, also a best-selling author and general eccentric character, took an interest in the Tuvans for unapologetically unserious reasons. The reason: because, for a boy from Brooklyn, they seemed exotic. The result was a haphazard collections of books, articles, and documentaries, starting in the 1980s and continuing into the early 2000s, which brought Tuva to the attention of many people who would have never otherwise heard of them. Feynman was a naturally ebullient and his enthusiasm for things Tuvan may have struck Reid as shallow and insufficiently reverent, given the cruelty and sadness of their recent history. (For more on Feynman and Tuva, see the book Tuva or Bust! Richard Feynman's Last Journey by Ralph Leighton, or one of the following videos on Youtube: ”The Quest for Tanna Tuva”, ”Last Journey of a Genius” or ”Genghis Blues”. The last one is my personal favorite.) As of this writing, this book is available for a very reasonable $7.37 on Kindle. I urge you to support ebooks that are priced under $10, which is certainly enough to pay for a bunch of 0's and 1's.