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A review by morgan_blackledge
A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons by Robert M. Sapolsky
5.0
OMG. Sapolsky is an absolute treasure. His books and lectures are quirky, irreverent, funny as hell, brilliant, informative and utterly original.
His Stanford course on behavioral neurobiology (see it for free on YouTube) is a masterpiece. I have watched the entire thing (it's like 36 hours long total) at least 3 times. And I'm fixing to watch it again in preparation for the affective psychology course I'm about to teach.
As a psychology lecturer, I'd be green with envy if I was in the same species as him. But Sapolsky's in a class of his own. I do my best to ape his lecture style, but how ever good at it I get (which is not very) I'm afraid my lectures will always be a pale simulacrum.
Simply put. He's a fuckin genius. My only gripe with him is that he doesn't write enough. I would kill for a new Sapolsky text.
As should be obvious by now, I really love Robert Sapolsky's work. So why did I wait so long to read this book? Because it's a memoir and I typically can't tolerate them. No good reason. I just don't like them. With the exception of this one.
By the end of the book you feel real sense of kinship for Sapolsky and his baboons. He does a marvelous job of closing the empathy gap by rendering the baboons and the people (including himself) in endearing but strangely unsentimental terms. I don't want to spoil the book, but I will say that you really care about the lil guys by the end of it.
If you're a Sapolsky fan (or even if you're not and you just want a terrifically funny and interesting book to read) this thing should be your next read. I feel like I understand the guy and his work so much better now. For the life of me I can't figure out why I waited so long to read it, but I'm really glad I did.
Five stars!!!!
His Stanford course on behavioral neurobiology (see it for free on YouTube) is a masterpiece. I have watched the entire thing (it's like 36 hours long total) at least 3 times. And I'm fixing to watch it again in preparation for the affective psychology course I'm about to teach.
As a psychology lecturer, I'd be green with envy if I was in the same species as him. But Sapolsky's in a class of his own. I do my best to ape his lecture style, but how ever good at it I get (which is not very) I'm afraid my lectures will always be a pale simulacrum.
Simply put. He's a fuckin genius. My only gripe with him is that he doesn't write enough. I would kill for a new Sapolsky text.
As should be obvious by now, I really love Robert Sapolsky's work. So why did I wait so long to read this book? Because it's a memoir and I typically can't tolerate them. No good reason. I just don't like them. With the exception of this one.
By the end of the book you feel real sense of kinship for Sapolsky and his baboons. He does a marvelous job of closing the empathy gap by rendering the baboons and the people (including himself) in endearing but strangely unsentimental terms. I don't want to spoil the book, but I will say that you really care about the lil guys by the end of it.
If you're a Sapolsky fan (or even if you're not and you just want a terrifically funny and interesting book to read) this thing should be your next read. I feel like I understand the guy and his work so much better now. For the life of me I can't figure out why I waited so long to read it, but I'm really glad I did.
Five stars!!!!