A Primate's Memoir

"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 remote 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 the farthest vestiges of unspoiled Africa. As he conducts unprecedented physiological research on wild primates, he becomes evermore 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.

Auteur

Robert M. Sapolsky

Contenu

Acknowledgments

• The Baboons: The Generations of Israel
• Zebra Kabobs and a Life of Crime
• The Revenge of the Liberals
• The Masai Fundamentalist and My Debut as a Social Worker
• The Coca-Cola Devil
• Teaching Old Men About Maps

• Memories of Blood: The East African Wars

• The Baboons: Saul in the Wilderness
• Samwelly Versus the Elephants
• The First Masai
• Zoology and National Security: A Shaggy Hyena Story
• The Coup
• Hearing Voices at the Wrong Time

• Sudan

• The Baboons: The Unstable Years
• Ol' Curly Toes and the King of Nubian-Judea
• The Penguins of Guyana
• When Baboons Were Falling Out of the Trees
• The Old White Man
• The Elevator

• The Mound Behind the 7-Eleven

• The Baboons: Nick
• The Raid
• Ice
• Joseph
• The Wonders of Machines in a Land Where They Are Still Novel: The Blind Leading the Blind
• Who's on First, What's on Second
• The Last Warriors
• The Plague