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Summary: excelente
Review: lo he pasado como un chino leyendo este libro. ¿quien dijo que los papiones son diferentes del hombre?Miguelito
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Summary: A Great Laugh Is Hard To Find
Review: Many other people have recommended this book, and I would like to add my two cents to what they have said. It is a wonderful book in many ways, informative, well-written, and so on, but it is also the funniest nature book ever written.
If it is alredy on your shelf, read it next. If it isn't already on your shelf, buy it and read it next.
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Summary: My Favorite Book This Year
Review: My husband bought this book for me as a Christmas present. OK, I'm interested in animal biology. Sure, the concept sounded fine. Suffice to say I didn't pick it up until March. And then I just plain didn't put it down. Best damn book of the year. I have recommended it to everyone from my brother to my mother-in-law. And this book has gotten under my skin in the way that really good books invariably do. I have vividly described ferocious army ants and Masai villagers drinking goat blood to my delighted five-year-old. I have watched power plays on the "monkey bars" dreaming of other monkeys in other habitats. It is rare to find a scientific book that is full of heart and folly and kindness. More difficult still to find a journey of the heart that is so rooted in unpretty things. Did I mention it's hilarious? Sapolsky and Sedaris are the only two writers I can think of who make me laugh out loud when I'm reading. It spooks the dog, but what the hell.
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Summary: Delightful and moving
Review: One of the funniest and most wrenching memoirs out there, compulsively readable, the kind you stay up in the wee hours to finish. If you have the remotest interest in Africa, primate research, or ways in which primate society is like our own, read Robert Sapolsky's memoir of his youth and pass it along to others.
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Summary: Very funny, absorbing, and fascinating account
Review: Robert Sapolsky spent a total of 21 years in the Kenyan bush observing and studying baboons, learning about their way of life and studying their stress levels. During that time he had more funny misadventures than a whole precinct of Keystone Cops, and I have to agree with another reviewer here that Sapolsky's book is the funniest memoir by a naturalist that I've ever read. At times, however, it's more like the baboons who are getting to study the young human's response to stress, as Sapolsky is forced to eat nothing but canned mackerel in tomato sauce, rice, and beans for months at a time, hordes of wild animals like wildebeests trample and crap over everything in camp during the migration season, and even the local elephants take to invading the camp and eating the roof and walls of his hut. He has a seemingly never-ending stream of erratic and unreliable camp assistants, and the one other western scientist in the area, was, as Sapolsky puts it, as feral an example of the unwashed and unhousebroken species of field biologist as he had ever seen. Some of these images will stay with me for life, such as the time that he was ill with diarrhea and had to answer the call just as a troop of elephants decided to visit his camp, quizzically but stoically watching the miserable young scientist doing his duty as they ate the branches and leaves of his lean-to which he had only just built. Actually, it was his Kenyan camp assistant that had built it, who went crazy shortly thereafter when his attempt to dam the upper part of the river with a mud dam came to naught. But that's another story. Then there's the time he encountered a couple of Masai tribesman, his only real neighbors, who wanted to know how he was tranquilizing the baboons he was studying. Sapolsky explained it was with a tranquilizer dart, and that the drug would work on a human too. No way, said the Masai, a baboon and human are totally different. Sure, says Sapolsky, we're very similar. In fact, we came from them and used to have tails just like them. No way, say the Masai, who are getting more agitated. Yes, insists Sapolsky, in fact you could have a baboon heart. Now the two Masai are really upset and are brandishing their spears in his face, after which point Sapolsky stopped arguing the point with the Masai "fundamentalists" and everything calmed down. There is a dark side to Sapolsky's memoirs too as he recounts his visit to Uganda which occurred during the Tanzanian/Ugandan war, when it wasn't safe to travel through much of the countryside, but Sapolsky was determined to see some of the sights there, and one night the part of town he was in got shelled by Amin's army and he and the driver of the truck he'd hitched a ride with spent the night huddled under the truck for protection. During a failed coup, he was beaten at an army checkpoint and witnessed street violence in Nairobi. And he had many sad as well as funny stories to tell about the hapless Kenyans, mostly young men from the local maize farms who came and went as his camp assistants, who seemed less happy about the rigors of a bush camp life than Sapolsky himself. But the book isn't all about the funny and sad stories of us (presumably) more evolved humans. Sapolsky gives much interesting and detailed information about the lives of the baboon troop he studied, especially their mating and dominance rituals and interactions, which aren't so different from us humans in many ways. The most aggressive and determined individuals rise to the top of baboon society. The females want to mate only with them. Sound like a familiar pattern? :-) Anyway, there are dozens of other funny and entertaining stories in this book. Sapolsky writes well, and we often see the absurdities and complexities of our more advanced culture reflected in the simplicity and naivete of local tribal life. I just had one minor nitpick. Although this is a trade-sized paperback, the print on the page is still a little small and even then the book is 300 pages long. They needed to make the font about 25% larger but obviously they were trying to keep the book from being 400 pages long because of the extra expense. Overall, this is a very funny, entertaining, and interesting account, and without a doubt is the funniest scientific memoir I've ever read.
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Summary: Totally abosbing
Review: Robert Sapolsky writes so well about both baboon behavior and the African culture, that you almost feel like you are right there with him. In addition, his commentary on his experiences is laugh out loud funny. He is honest and straightforward, never hesitant in giving his opinions about different people (different baboons, too), cultural behaviors, and his own reactions. A totally engrossing and enjoyable book!
Rating: 
Summary: scattered yet powerful
Review: Sapolsky devotes very little time to himself in this memoir, partly because he has so much of interest to say about his acquantainces (human and baboon) in Kenya. The title aptly describes his location of himself in the evolutionary picture. There are several kinds of primates in this story, but all have similar flaws and gifts--baboons as well as humans. Unlike many people who write about animals, Sapolsky doesn't credit the baboons with a wiser or kinder lifestyle. He makes it abundantly clear that they can be mean, selfish, and stupid--and then he turns around and makes exactly the same points about humans. Yet there's a very warm sensibility about all of his encounters. Sapolsky is capable of enjoying the humour in many situations, and is also redeemingly honest about his scientific motivations--he really likes playing with dry ice and cutting up dead things. The framework of the book is Sapolsky's decades-long study of a baboon group, but this is by no means the majority of the subject matter. Spending three months of every year in Kenya, Sapolsky witnesses its many political changes, makes lasting friendships with some of the locals, and gains a unique perspective from which to critique both his original and his adopted cultures (his chapter on various scams perpetrated against tourists, both in Kenya and New York, is hilarious). The writing, often conversational and humourous, gains in power from this natural style. In the final chapter, disease strikes the baboon group Sapolsky has come to know so well, and his narration of the tragedy is simple, honest, and all the more devastating because of it.
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Summary: One of the best books I've read in years!
Review: Sapolsky gives us a glimpse of the social organization of our close primate relatives as he tests his hypothesis that levels of stress hormones depend on one's placement in the social hierarchy. His results should not be a surprise. But what is a surprise is how captivating his observations are - his honest affection for the baboons, his realistic assessment of life in east Africa, his refusal to place blame or to aggrandize. Sapolsky is a wonderful writer - and I've never laughed so much when reading about neurobiology!
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Summary: Endearing work written by a mensch
Review: Sapolsky's book, "A Primate's Memoir," is a work of a true comic artist. Conjuring fear, anxiety, sadness, and joy through the prisim of laughter, Sapolsky's book managed to be both hilarious and poignant. It's a personal account, interweaving a patchwork of observations on Africa, baboons, and primate nature in a series of essays based on Sapolsky's experience studying a troop of baboons in Kenya. The book illustrates both his work with the animals and his experience as a New York City naturalist in the heart of Africa. Loosely organized around the life cycle of a male baboon, "Memoir of a Primate" constantly compares Sapolsky's life with those of his subjects. And it's no wonder, as the author delightfully paints his subjects in anthropomorphic colors, going to far as to give the baboons Old Testament names, to make friends in the troop, and, more tragically, to fall in love with a doomed female. Sapolsky's rites of passage occur on the fields of Africa, as he injects himself onto a foreign culture he is utterly unprepared for. On his first day in Kenya, he is swindled no less than three times. As he spends more time in Africa, he becomes a member of the community of park rangers, local herders, tourists, farmers, and naturalists that border Kenya's national parks. He extends his territory, poking into the Sudan and Uganda, travelling in Ruwanda to visit Fosse's apes. And finally, he is psychologically sheared from his tribe through an outbreak of a preventable disease. I wish, however, that the Sapolsky had more carefully described his experiences to us. He never described his initial foray into the bush, the first meeting with his subjects, his first days living in Africa. We also learn about baboon behavior only in passing, never get an adequate description of an animal, nor do we fully understand what he was studying and why. The book also jumps around time and place, major characters (such as his wife) are oftentimes relegated to obscure passages in what must be an attempt to protect their honor. And at one excruciatingly annoying literary moment, Sapolsky admits that he made an incredibly stupid mistake while in Uganda that placed him facedown on the pavement with several automatic weapons pointed at his head, but never reveals what that mistake was. Apparently, he was too embarrassed. But overall, the book overcomes its flaws. This is not a book that rests solely on its prose, this is no "Heartbreaking Work..." or "This Boy's Life." Instead, it's an endearing work of humanity - or perhaps better, of "primatity." Sapolsky is a mensch, and he illuminates life with a grin and a tear. (By the way, what's up with the Amazon review? It focuses on Sapolsky's anecdotal recollection of Diane Fosse, as if that were a major component of the book. In actuality, it's just a small observation made by the author from a personal experience, and has little to do with the themes raised by his book. Drives me nuts when reviewers bring personal agendas to the table when writing a review of a book. It's bad writing.)
Rating:
Summary: Both laugh-out-loud funny and deadly serious
Review: Sapolsky's memoir manages to tell the story of several Africas few of us will ever experience: an up-close, intimate relationship with one of its species (the baboon); an interesting, humorous, and often disturbing image of politics and culture in a place where good and evil seem to battle daily; and a glimpse of travel and life on the earth's second largest continent. This is a thoroughly enjoyable book. Who ever knew this was such a fascinating creature? I wept with Sapolsky and laughed with him, too.
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