Beyond Innocence: An Autobiography in Letters: The Later Years

Rating:
Summary: A Stellar Life Told in Letters
Review: Jane Goodall is one of my personal heroines. Any time I might think that one person cannot make a difference and that I should just continue to sit and do nothing, I can read about Goodall and her singular and single-minded vision of changing the world.

This volume of Goodall's autobiography consists of hundreds of her personal letters, adroitly gathered together and explained by the editor so that there is a cohesive whole. We follow her through years of expanding her work with chimpanzees at her original research facilities in Gombe (where, as a very young woman, she worked ALONE), to her expanding environmental empire, to her ceaseless lobbying, traveling, letter-writing, speech-making, and appeals to leaders throughout the world to help in her efforts to save her beloved chimps (our closest primate cousins), baboons, other wildlife, and especially the rain forests upon which these animals depend for life.

Her letters show the private Jane, full of the joy of motherhood (she raised her only son, Hugo Jr., or "Grublin," in the wild in a childhood that had to be spectacular beyond belief, but was like any other mother worried about teething, late talking, naughtiness and refusal to do his math!), battling bouts of malaria while writing endless (it seems) books, proposals, thank-yous, acknowledgements, and so forth.

We see her through the pain of divorce, a happy remarriage, and the horror of seeing her new husband die of inoperable cancer. We see her renewed efforts to save her beloved chimpanzees, and her first horrified visit to a lab, where she was reduced to kneeling in tears at the plight of captive apes treated like things rather than the sensitive creatures they are.

The book ends in the late 90s, with Jane's latest conservation efforts still going strong. I was so intent and so wound up in her story that I immediately went to the Jane Goodall Institute Website to see what I could do in some small way to further her cause. But you don't have to be a conservationist to admire this strong, brilliant, single-minded and fabulous woman. This is a book for everyone, and I recommend it highly and unequivocally.