This is the chronicle of a scientist's coming of age in remote Africa. Upon graduating from college, a booksmart and naive Sapolsky leaves the comforts of the Northeastern United States for the very first time, to join a baboon troop in Kenya as a young transfer male. An expert in primate behaviour, Sapolsky sets out to study the relationship between stress and disease. As he observes the Machiavellian politics of the troop, giving the primates biblical names and pinpointing his favourite (Benjamin) and his nemesis (Nebuchadnezzar), he also immerses himself in the society of the neighbouring Masai tribesmen and ventures far from his camp on a series of jaw-dropping adventures. Combining irreverence and humour with the best credentials in his field, Sapolsky writes as originally and vividly about people and their society as he does about animals and theirs.

About the Author

Robert Sapolsky is Professor of Biology and Neurology at Stanford University, and a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya. He lives in San Francisco

Reviews

Lynn Yarris"Newsday""A Primate's Memoir" flies along like a well-paced and finely crafted novel...[giving] us a cast of characters as memorably colorful as any that Dickens ever created.