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ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY
HUMANIST GALAXY
OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS
ROBERT SAPOLSKY
July 17, 2021
A PRIMATE'S MEMOIR:
A Neuroscientist's Unconventional
Life Among the Baboons.
by Robert M. Sapolsky.
Touchstone, 2002, 2001 (304 pages)
Quote = "I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla!" (By the author of the book, Robert Sapolsky)
Quote = "The victim of countless scams and his own idealistic illusions, Sapolsky nevertheless survives culinary atrocities, gunpoint encounters, and a surreal kidnaping, 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 with his subjects — unique and compelling characters in their own right — and he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevents him." (From the publisher's blurb, Touchstone/Blackwell North America)
BOOK OUTLINE
note = Numbers in parentheses refer to pages
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (9-10)
PART 1 — THE ADOLESCENT YEARS: When I first joined the troop (11-91)
1. THE BABOONS — The generations of Israel (13-24)
2. ZEBRA KABOBS AND A LIFE OF CRIME (25-35)
3. THE REVENGE OF THE LIBERALS (37-45)
4. THE MASAI FUNDAMENTALIST AND MY DEBUT AS A SOCIAL WORKER (47-56)
5. THE COCA-COLA DEVIL (57-64)
6. TEACHING OLD MEN ABOUT MAPS (65-69)
7. MEMORIES OF BLOOD — The East African wars (71-91)
PART 2 — THE SUB-ADULT YEARS (93-166)
8. THE BABOONS — Saul in the wilderness (95-104)
9. SAM WELLY VERSUS THE ELEPHANTS (105-116)
10. THE FIRST MASAI (117-120)
11. ZOOLOGY AND NATIONAL SECURITY — A shaggy hyena story (121-126)
12. THE COUP (127-134)
13. HEARING VOICES AT THE WRONG TIME (135-138)
14. SUDAN (139-166)
PART 3 — TENUOUS ADULTHOOD (167-230)
15. THE BABOONS — The unstable years (169-175)
16. OL' CURLY TOES AND THE KING OF NUBIAN-JUDEA (177-185)
17. THE PENGUINS OF GUYANA (187-195)
18. WHEN BABOONS WERE FALLING OUT OF THE TREES (197-207)
19. THE OLD WHITE MAN (209-212)
20. THE ELEVATOR (213-217)
21. THE MOUND BEHIND THE 7-ELEVEN (219-230)
PART 4 — ADULTHOOD (231-304)
22. THE BABOONS — Nick (233-241)
23. THE RAID (243-248)
24. ICE (249-254)
25. JOSEPH (255-258)
26. THE WONDERS OF MACHINES IN A LAND WHERE THEY ARE STILL NOVEL — The blind leading the blind (259-261)
27. WHO'S ON FIRST, WHAT'S ON SECOND (263-267)
28. THE LAST WARRIORS (269-273)
29. THE PLAGUE (275-304)
AUTHOR NOTE, SUMMARY,
AND BOOK DESCRIPTION
AUTHOR NOTE = Robert M. Sapolsky is a Professor of Biology and Neurology at Stanford and a Research Associate with the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya. He is the author of the books, The Trouble with Testosterone and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, both Los Angeles Times Book Award finalists. A regular contributor to the television programs, Discover and The Sciences and is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, Sapolsky lives in San Francisco, California. – Bowker Author Biography.
SUMMARY = Here is Robert Sapolsky's account of his life in the African bush with neighbors both human and primate, by turns hilarious and poignant. It is the culmination of more than two decades of experience and research. The book is a magnum opus from one of our foremost scientist-writers.
BOOK DESCRIPTION = "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. Raised in an intellectual, immigrant family in Brooklyn, Sapolsky wished he could live in the primate diorama in the Museum of Natural History.
He wrote fan letters to primatologists, started reading their textbooks at age fourteen, and even learned Swahili in high school, all with the hopes of one day joining his primate brethren in Africa. Finally, upon graduating from college, Sapolsky's dream comes true when, at age twenty-one, he leaves the comforts of the United States for the very first time to join a baboon troop in Kenya as a "young transfer male."
Book smart and naive, Sapolsky sets out to study the relationship between stress and disease. But he soon learns that life in the African bush bears little resemblance to the tranquillity of a museum diorama. He is alone in the middle of the Serengeti with no radio, no television, no electricity, no running water, and no telephone. His nearest neighbors are the Masai, a warlike tribes-people whose marriages are polygamous, with wedding parties featuring tureens of cow's blood.
The victim of countless scams and his own idealistic illusions, Sapolsky nevertheless survives culinary atrocities, gunpoint encounters, and a surreal kidnaping, while witnessing the encroachment of the tourist mentality on the farthest vestiges of unspoiled Africa. As Sapolsky conducts unprecedented physiological research on wild primates, he becomes evermore enamored with his subjects' unique and compelling characters in their own right. He returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevents him. – Blackwell North America.
EDITORIAL BOOK REVIEWS
PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY REVIEW = Few would relish a job requiring proficiency with a blowgun as well as a willingness to put up with parching heat, low pay and copious amounts of baboon shit. But for Sapolsky (The Trouble with Testosterone), a Stanford professor and MacArthur grant recipient, it was literally a dream come true. As a boy in New York City, he had wanted to live in one of the African dioramas at the Museum of Natural History. One week after graduating from Harvard in the mid-1970s, he got his chance: he went to Kenya to study social behavior in baboons.
Hilariously unprepared for the challenges of living in the bush, the nave grad student learned to deal with supply and transportation snafus, army ants and giant cockroaches, safari tourists, dinners of canned spaghetti coated with a mixture of sugar and rancid camel's milk, and surreal government bureaucracies. He developed great fondness for "his" baboons, whose behavior seemed uncannily like that of a bunch of quarrelsome human adolescents, and discovered that their interactions didn't necessarily conform to accepted theories.
While Sapolsky's primate observations are always fascinating, his thoughts on Africa and Africans are even more compelling. As funny and irreverent as a good ol' boy regaling his friends with vacation-from-hell stories, Sapolsky can also be disarmingly emotional as in his clear-headed tribute to late gorilla researcher Dian Fossey, and his final chapters, which reveal his rage and impotence as he watched his baboons succumb to a horrific plague.
This memoir is filled with cynicism and awe, passion and humor. It is both an absorbing account of a young man's growing maturity and a tribute to the continent that, despite its troubles and extremes, held him in its thrall. Agent, Katinka Matson. [See Oliver Sacks and Edward O. Wilson who discuss an excerpt of the book in Discover magazine.]
BOOKLIST REVIEW = "I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla." Thus begins primatologist Sapolsky's reminiscences of 20 plus years studying baboons in Kenya. Originally intending to study the effects of stress on baboons, the author became enmeshed not only in the lives of his baboon subjects but in the social lives and politics of the people who live around his study area. Tales of darting baboons with anesthetic for physical examinations intertwine with stories of friendship with the local Masai village; visits from other field researchers (such as "Laurence of the Hyenas") intersperse with observing the overthrow of the baboon troop's alpha male while the author also deals with the post-colonial, bribery-ridden bureaucracy of Kenya. Humorous writing worthy of Gerald Durrell at his best mixes with hard-eyed descriptions of the reality of field work in a third-world country, and the good times and problems of the baboons tend to mirror those of their human neighbors. Sapolsky often wears his heart on his sleeve, and this emotional involvement combined with the scientific realities of the tales he tells makes for engrossing reading. -- Nancy Bent.
LIBRARY JOURNAL REVIEW = Robert Sapolsky (biology, neuroscience, & neurosurgery, Stanford University; author of the book, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers) here recalls his years as a primate researcher in Kenya, studying a baboon troop while navigating the vicissitudes of life where beauty and generosity are juxtaposed with horrific lawlessness and corruption. Sapolsky mixes wonderfully detailed anecdotes with serious scientific observations while also delivering a poignant coming-of-age story. One minor problem with this release is that the original work was published in 2001 and some aspects of the story now feel dated. Still, it is absorbing and very engagingly written and quite well narrated by veteran actor Mike Chamberlain. VERDICT: Recommended for fans of nature and travel writing. Sapolsky includes all the typical elements of recent popular field biology books... but his hilarious writing style and sense of the absurd are fairly unique. – Forrest E. Link, College of New Jersey.
RECOMMENDATION: You can re-read this summary according to a reinforcement schedule, such as a few hours later and a few days later and then several times in the next week or two. This strategy can help you take advantage of the power of the spaced-repetition method of memorization. Such deep introspection can strengthen your willpower and change your adaptive self-identity to increase your self-esteem.
REMEMBER ALWAYS:
You are your Adaptable Memory!
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