A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons by Robert M. Sapolsky (PDF)

Description

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.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Robert Sapolsky is a brilliant, funny, engaging writer and teacher. His book is insightful, humorous, and deeply touching. I couldn’t put it down. His stories from his lifetime research on the savanna are inspiring and, ultimately, profound. Highly recommend this wonderful book.

⭐Interesting read about the writers experiences as a primate researcher in Africa. However, it wasn’t what I was after. I was looking for his writings concerning philosophy.I know, my fault just a heads up

⭐This book popped up in my Kindle list of recommended books (I assume because I live in Kenya and have bought many books on various topics related to Kenya), and I am so thrilled that it did!Well I absolutely loved it! I laughed and I cried. I could relate to so much of it as I have spent a great deal of time visiting the game reserves here. I also enjoyed reading Robert’s stories of his interaction with the Masai and other local people – all of it very accurate and very amusing.I see in earlier reviews people stated that the Kindle version has many typos. This has obviously been corrected as my version was perfect. Someone else also stated that the picture on the book cover was a mandrill. Well it isn’t at all – it’s very definitely an olive baboon which is the type of baboon found in Kenya.This is truly a wonderful book. Highly recommended.

⭐In his autobiography, George Santayana writes: “Ghastly are those autobiographies that contain nothing but old jokes and old anecdotes,” and this book comes dangerously close to matching that description. Make no mistake: this is not a work of science; it is not even popular science. It is hardly fitting to even call this book a memoir, as it consists of little more than a series of anecdotes, loosely strung together. Sapolsky’s main goal is neither to educate nor to reveal, but to entertain.At this, he is quite successful. Sapolsky has both a large store of outlandish experiences, and a winsome way of putting them into words. Every time the reader thinks that Sapolsky can’t possibly have any more good stories, he effortlessly comes up with three more, each more absurd than the next. These stories are mostly of ineptitude: the white American finding his way in the bush, the sheltered scientist getting wise to the ways of the world, the rash young man making foolish decisions, the misunderstandings between different ethnic groups, the collision of old and new ways of living, the country bumpkin in the city, the city slicker in the country, and so on and so forth. It is a parade of farce: when Sapolsky isn’t making some kind of foolhardy mistake, somebody else is.At first, this is all very fine; but it gets grating by about the halfway point. It feels too much like hearing your college buddy, who went on an exotic study abroad trip, tell you about all the cool things he did: fun for five minutes, dull for fifteen. Part of the reason so many of these stories got tiresome was because Sapolsky relied on too many clichéd tropes: the brainy scientist who can’t tie his own shoes; the pure, untamed African savanna; the stubborn but noble Maasai people; the comical African yokels who don’t understand technology; the clueless, tasteless tourists. I’m not saying that Sapolsky wasn’t telling the truth; but he is overly attracted to the types of stories which fill up trite travel books.The only thing which serves to offset these entertaining, but uninteresting, stories, was Sapolsky’s scientific work among the baboons. This starts off strong, as Sapolsky describes setting up camp, getting into the routine, learning to anesthetize baboons with a blowgun, naming his baboons after figures in the Bible. He does a fine job of making the reader interested in the lives of his subjects; but then, after only a few dozen pages, the baboons drop out of the picture, only making a major reappearance in the closing chapter.When they do reappear in the end, however, the book redeems itself. In the beginning of the final chapter, Sapolsky writes: “I have tried throughout this book to give some attention to the style of writing, to try to shape some of these stories. Here I will not try.” If only he had done that for the whole of the book! I will not spoil the final chapter; but I will say that it was orders of magnitude better than every other in the book. Here, Sapolsky drops the fun-loving, bumbling, naïve persona he adopts during his anecdotes, and emerges as a real, round person. The writing ceases to be cute, and becomes sincere and affecting. And we even get a decent dose of science!The problem with this book is that it should really have been two books: one about the baboons, and one about himself. Trying to weld them together makes for a disjointed and disappointing work: we learn little about either the science or the man. For as soon as Sapolsky threatens to delve into his research—which promised to be fascinating, as he studied both baboon behavior and the neurology of stress—he backs off, as if afraid to scare the reader. But as soon as Sapolsky comes close to revealing what he is like himself, he backs away, too, into the land of jokes and anecdotes, the domain of harmless fun. Sapolsky takes everything potentially serious or challenging and removes it, leaving only the bubble gum of his life. This is a shame, because, as we find out when he finally drops the act, he is a fascinating man.

⭐Last year I stumbled on some photos of baby gorillas. Then I went down to the zoo to look at them. Cutest little buggers… And somehow, from there, from reading about gorillas, I stumbled on baboons. And found them, and their ways, even more interesting. I’d read several other books on baboons, before coming on this one…and what a joy this was to read!This was like reading about baboons, if Mark Twain had been doing the writing: the author’s eye for humor, and his willingness to describe accurately, not just baboons, but also the people he came in contact with: he spares neither them, nor him, nor our own modern day sensibilities. I was laughing out loud, at him, at the baboons, and my own preconceptions.I don’t give five stars, but this was just too good. I got it on Kindle, and liked it so much I just got through ordering a new paperback edition from Amazon. I didn’t need it, and I’m kind of mobile in my old age, but I wanted this in my bookshelf, probably right next to my old Bukowski short stories ;-)A great book, and a writer I will now follow avidly

⭐I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It brought me to laughter as well as tears. I appreciated the way he “anthropomorphised” his beloved baboons. I’ve been to Mozambique’s Gorongoza National Park and have sat for hours watching the antics of the baboons that live there, never once imagining the lives they actually live that are highlighted in this book. After reading this, I’m a bit nervous about eating food prepared in the lesser-known game camps! HIGHLY RECOMMEND!

⭐Other reviewers have posted descriptive and insightful reviews of this book, so I’ll only say I’ve read a lot of books about primates (by Frans de Waal among others) I’ve never laughed as much as I did reading this. And I finished it with tears in my eyes.What a writer. What a guy. Now reading his ‘Behave’.

⭐Somehow, with all the other stuff one has going on, and all the other books that are piling up waiting to get read, the great wide spectrum of Africa and almost anything associated with it has never made it on to my list. There is just too much to learn and some limits are necessary! I finally got there through Sapolsky himself and his neuroscience lectures on DVD. Therein he mentions his baboons in passing and that’s how I got the tip off.On the face of it this is a field study report but Sapolsky takes us way beyond that into the lives of the people, as well as the wild life, of a country that is inexhaustibly fascinating. This is as much a study of the human primate as any other. Sapolsky is infectiously curious about everything that surrounds him and with the eyes of a newborn sups on the detail that falls at his feet and describes it with a penetrating observation that irresistibly sweeps you up into every new adventure he takes on – and he does that with a courage that is admittedly surprising in an innocent abroad. This is a guy using his life to the full and for that we can only envy him. Thanks for sharing Bob.

⭐What a read! Baboons! Who cares? Nasty, smelly thugs of the Savannah. Read this book and you will care, and laugh a lot along the way. This is a book written by a scientist who anthropomorphises his study-troop of Kenyan baboons, by naming each, and usually naming them after the patriarchs of the Old Testament. It is a very entertaining read, full of stories about the familial relationships between the baboons written from the perspective of a nosey neighbour peering over the garden fence. The scientific mantle is lightly worn but you will pick up insights and knowledge without realising it.Unfortunately no book about East Africa is complete without an insight into the part played by the local people in the lives and deaths of the wildlife. This book is no exception. Most of the accounts of relationships with local people are written with affection and no loss of good humour. However bribery and corruption is there too with awful consequences for the baboons, and that brings an element of real anger and sadness near the end of the book.

⭐I have read the other big layman oriented Sapolsky book, and it is much more informative, but this is way more fun. It is in fact one of the most hilarious books about living amongst the baboons I have ever… no, wait. It is one of the most hilarious books about experimental field work on stress that I have…OK, it’s one of a kind, all right? But it is fun, readable as a novel, informative, and treats Africa with knowledge and respect. The chapter on Sudan is, well, a lot less fun, and knowing what little I know about Sudan, it’s as it should be.It’s like spending an evening chatting with a fiercely intelligent, witty, self-deprecating, wonderfully humane guy, and you will never think of the hyenas in The Lion King the same way again.

⭐I wouldn’t normally look for books about baboons, but this came up as a ‘recommended’ book on Amazon based on others books I’ve bought – and I’m so glad that I bought it. ‘A Primate’s Memoir is wonderful, and I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying it. Sapolsky is a great writer (as well as a scientist), and this book combines comedy, nature, biography, science, and travelogue. His descriptions of the baboons, with their different personalities, made me really care about the individual baboons – as well as the people working with him. There are some sad sections towards the end, which Sapolsky hints at earlier in the book, but it’s a very upbeat and funny book, and the book has lingered in my mind since finishing it. Highly recommended.

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