Rating: 
Summary: Tears of laughter and heartbreak
Review: You know a book is really good when you shed tears from both laughter and heartbreak. The author, a Stanford professor of biology and neurology and research associate at the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya, does just that without making you feel that you've been manipulated or set up. A PRIMATE'S MEMOIR is part travelogue, part Jane Goodall-Diane Fossey communion with forest primates, and part field research in neurological behavior-related stress. Underlying all of these is the theme of a young, liberal Jewish boy form the Bronx coming-of-age in post-colonial East Africa. The book is as much about the peoples of Africa and contemporary cultural shifts as it is about his troop of baboons on the edge of the Serengeti. Sapolsky is a natural story teller, the humorous ones told most often at his own expense. And even his behavioral observations and research findings are discussed as if the two of you are shooting the breeze over a pint of Guinness. Where most field biologists avoid anything remotely anthropomorphic, Saplosky is so comfortable with himself as a scientist that he uses the best words he can muster to communicate to the reader whether they'd be approved by some learned academic committee or not. His language, befitting the bar where you and the author are downing pint after pint, is more Hemingway than scholarly. Don't confuse Sapolsky's informality and naming-rather-than-numbering-his-study-subjects attitude as a sign that he is something less than a fully dedicated scientist. He makes this distinction perfectly clear in a chapter about Dianne Fossey, who in addition to being a substandard scientist in the author's opinion, was a threat to her own beloved apes. The low rating from the hand-full of animal lovers who submitted reviews is the only the reason that the overall rating for this book is 4.5 stars instead of a perfect 5.0!
Rating:
Summary: If you have ever travelled to Africa....
Review: you will find this book hilariously funny. It is full of anecdotes that can't possibly be true, but if you have travelled to Africa, you know they are nothing but the truth. This novel is written clearly and descriptively, drawing the audience into the authors encampment. It is the type of novel to keep and read over and over.
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