De Waal turns his years of research into a delightful and illuminating read for nonscientists, a book that will surely make...
Once again, the eminent primatologist takes readers deep into the world of animals to show us that we humans are not the unique creatures we like to think we are.
In his latest highly illuminating exploration of the inner lives of animals, de Waal (Psychology/Emory Univ.), the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, provides a companion piece to his prizewinning Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (2016), which revealed the sophistication of animals’ brains. Here, it is their emotions that take center stage. One of our keenest observers of emotional expressions, body language, and social dynamics, the author demonstrates that pride, shame, guilt, revenge, gratefulness, forgiveness, hope, and disgust all exist in other animals, not just humans. A dying chimpanzee matriarch’s farewell to her longtime caretaker provides the title of the book, but this is just the first of many stories about the immense—and unique—emotional capacities of animals. “I don’t expect to ever again encounter an ape personality as expressive and inspiring as Mama’s,” he writes. De Waal is impatient with scholars who assert that language lies at the heart of emotions, that feelings cannot be expressed without language. Sometimes he names names; sometimes he simply dismisses their ideas as nonsense. Most of the author’s observations involve the spontaneous behavior of chimpanzees, bonobos, and other primates, but readers will also be rewarded with tales of birds, dogs, horses, elephants, and rats. As he has shown in nearly all of his books, de Waal is a skilled storyteller, and his love for animals always shines through. His examples of the actions of certain humans—e.g., Donald Trump, Sean Spicer—lend color to his argument, and the simple drawings that illustrate behaviors and facial expressions are exceptionally clear and effective.
De Waal turns his years of research into a delightful and illuminating read for nonscientists, a book that will surely make readers want to grab someone’s arm and exclaim, “Listen to this!”Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-393-63506-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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Advances the compelling message that we have much to learn from orangutans as their numbers diminish.
Up-close encounters with a fascinating group of people and the orangutans with whom they share their lives.
In 2001, at the age of 50, Thompson (Journalism/Thompson Rivers Univ.; A River Rat’s Guide to the Thousand Islands, 1996, etc.) made his first trip to Borneo where he visited sick and orphaned orangutans. Spending “hours and hours” at the clinic proved to be a life-changing experience, as the author came to realize that “a creature like this can think and feel like you do.” He watched veterinarian Rosa Maria Garriga work tirelessly with the orangutans. He learned the story of the famous Kusasi, who was orphaned and taken captive in the late ’70s, then rescued and taken to a camp. Travelling between the bush and the camp, Kusasi thrived to become the dominating orangutan in the area. One of the disputed issues among primatologists is whether humans should act as surrogate mothers for orphaned orangutans, who normally stay with their mothers until they are seven. Thompson met several primatologists who mothered orphaned apes with mixed success—some of the apes became overattached, jealous and ultimately dangerous or unable to cope in the wild. The author gives due credit to famed primatologists Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, who “perceived different aspects of apes because they saw them as individuals with an emotional life.” Thompson ponders the unique intelligence of orangutans, who appear to have the IQ of a three-and-a-half-year-old, yet don’t have a child’s mind.
Advances the compelling message that we have much to learn from orangutans as their numbers diminish.Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8065-3133-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Citadel/Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
Though full of pauses, second glances, and head-scratches, this is a very welcome primer in logical thinking.
Logic helps people build bridges to understanding. But what if people don’t want those bridges? Aha, says this entertaining guide: There’s a meta-problem for you….
In our current landscape of the postfactual, the loudest bellower is king. Enter Cheng (Beyond Infinity: An Expedition to the Outer Limits of Mathematics, 2017, etc.), the scientist in residence at the Art Institute of Chicago—now there’s a good idea—and possessor of a formidable, mathematically inclined mind. Though the author aims to teach math, science, and formal logic as she progresses, she really means to help readers construct better arguments, which may turn out to be a world-saving proposition. There is a built-in advantage to using logic, she writes, in that it provides a framework for discovering what is true, and “one of the main reasons to have a clear framework for accessing truth is to be able to agree about things.” The notion of agreement will come into play late in the book, when Cheng analyzes the best kinds of arguments, which allow us to understand another person’s point of view. Until that point, there are theorems, axioms, and proofs to go through, for mathematically based logic hinges on such things as the union of sets (the place where two circles meet in a Venn diagram) and the proper application of analogy to any particular problem. The author isn’t exactly playful, but she pitches a few paradoxes as she moves along—one of them being the fact that, since logic doesn’t actually correspond to what we know as the real world, we have to “forget the pesky details that prevent things from behaving logically.” In other words, we have to think abstractly, which poses plenty of other challenges.
Though full of pauses, second glances, and head-scratches, this is a very welcome primer in logical thinking.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5416-7248-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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