A Primate's Memoir A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the 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 Memoirinterweaves 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 Memoiris a magnum opus from one of our foremost science writers.

Robert M. Sapolsky is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya. He is the author of The Trouble with Testosterone and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. A regular contributor to Discover and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, Sapolsky lives in San Francisco.