Describe Books Concering A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons
| Original Title: | A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons |
| ISBN: | 0743202414 (ISBN13: 9780743202411) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Robert M. Sapolsky
Paperback | Pages: 304 pages Rating: 4.35 | 5777 Users | 680 Reviews
Particularize Based On Books A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons
| Title | : | A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons |
| Author | : | Robert M. Sapolsky |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 304 pages |
| Published | : | March 12th 2002 by Scribner (first published 2001) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Science. Autobiography. Memoir. Animals. Cultural. Africa. Anthropology |
Commentary Conducive To Books A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons
In the tradition of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, Robert Sapolsky, a foremost science writer and recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, tells the mesmerizing story of his twenty-one years in remote Kenya with a troop of Savannah 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 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.
Rating Based On Books A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons
Ratings: 4.35 From 5777 Users | 680 ReviewsCommentary Based On Books A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons
Having recently finished a creative nonfiction class with a healthy reading list populated with memoirs, I can say that Sapolskys A Primates Memoir is the best one of that genre that I have had the chance to read. In it we are treated to the authors adventures in Africa studying baboons over the course of about two decades. But the focus retains a healthy balance between two types of primates the troop of baboons and that other most complex primate homo sapiens. Sapolsky has to deal with theI cannot remember the last time I read a non-fiction book; it has been a while. So it was with interest when a friend choose this book for a group of us to read. We have a bit of a buddy read group and once a month one of us gets to choose something completely different. The purpose is to get us out of our reading comfort zone.A Primates memoir is way out of my normal genre, but I have to say I enjoyed the change. I also have to say that I was expecting something completely different to what i
I loved this book! I loved it and then I loved it even more. It is written so well and has a little bit of everything in it. There's really cool science, history, humor, and more, all written in a way that anyone can understand and follow. I found myself reading out load to friends the chapter about the man who was a machine. That part still makes me laugh and the end made me cry like a baby. Then I reread the end and cried some more. I think if I was having a kid or buying a dog anytime soon
Read this This is coming from a right-brained person who never would have given this book a second glance had it not been forced on her by a friend. It's an irreverent and thoughtful tale of a neuroscientist's years observing a tribe of baboons in Kenya to learn about their social hierarchy and resulting stress levels. I loved it for its ability to make you relate to a tribe of alternately loving, back-stabbing, calculating, snobby, inclusive baboons like you would family; the fact that Sapolsky
A solid read.What I expectedA book about baboons and neuroscience. A blend of naturalistic descriptions, biology and scientific findings about the way baboon brain works and how this is relevant to humans.What it actually wasThis was more of a memoir than science book: there was historical and cultural perspective on African tribes and their dynamics as seen by an outsider, and naturalism: descriptions of lives of baboons. And not much in the way of neuroscience or dry facts.What I likedAbout
This is a book by an animal lover, a loner, a Jewish white guy from New York, a primate and cultural observer of baboons and of (mostly black) Africans whom he meets in his fieldwork in Kenya. His stories of the baboons are tender, revealing, uncomfortably familiar, as primate cultural stories often are. The stories of the Africans are spotty. Sometimes, I feel I am reading an astute cultural observer (Africans' rites, tribal relations, ghost stories), but other times I couldn't shake the creepy
What a trip this book is! I was expecting an account of some scientists experience working with monkeys out in the African bush. But this book is so much more than that! It's a colorful ADVENTURE by a hilarious yet straightforward kid/guy/hippie/researcher/scientist. His research interests in baboons is what led him to the African bush, but that only forms a part of what this book is about. The reader is treated to accounts of his hitchhiking trips to various African countries (including war
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