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A Primate's Memoir

Robert M. Sapolsky

A Primate's Memoir

In the tradition of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, Robert Sapolsky tells the mesmerizing story of his twenty-one years in remote Kenya with a troop of savanna baboons. "I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla," writes Robert Sapolsky in this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist's coming-of-age in Africa. An exhilarating account of Sapolsky's twenty-one-year study of a troop of rambunctious baboons in Kenya, A Primate's Memoir interweaves serious scientific observations with wry commentary about the challenges and pleasures of living in the wilds of the Serengeti—for man and beast alike. Over two decades, Sapolsky survives culinary atrocities, gunpoint encounters, and a surreal kidnapping, while witnessing the encroachment of the tourist mentality on Africa. As he conducts unprecedented physiological research on wild primates, he becomes enamored of his subjects—unique and compelling characters in their own right—and he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevents him. By turns hilarious and poignant, A Primate's Memoir is a magnum opus from one of our foremost science writers.

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Publisher
Simon and Schuster
Year
2007
ISBN-13
9781416590361
Genre
Biography & Memoir
Topics
PrimatologyFieldwork in AfricaScientist's coming-of-age

Awards

Other awarded books from Robert M. Sapolsky

  • The Trouble With Testosterone And Other Essays On The Biology Of The Human Predicament
  • Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers