This book is a wonderful introduction to primate behavior, ecology and conservation. A collection of articles originally published in Natural History magazine, this book provides a perfect balance of the above topics in primatology. If you are just getting started in the field or you are simply curious about our primate cousins this book is great. If you are a seasoned primatologist, this is a fun weekend read!

Natural History magazine has published a wealth of information about primates, written by leading experts in field research. Students of primatology, and anyone interested in animal behavior and ecology, will find this anthology relevant and informative. These studies demonstrate the diversity of our closest animal relatives and the intricacies of their lives and relationships amongst themselves and with other species.

The writings of field scientists such asChristophe Boesch, Robert Harding, Dawn Starin, Thomas Struhsaker and Patricia Wright cover wide taxonomic and geographic ranges. The editors' glue that effectively binds these essays together is the excellent prefacing overview accompanying each section (Behavior, Community Ecology, Diet, Reproduction and Conservation). These writings demonstrate the skills of biologists in translating field observations into literate and eminently readable images of their primate subjects.

This anthology provides valuable testimony tothe contributions of field studies in understanding our primate kin-- their context in nature, and the strategies they employ for coping with daily life and the encroachments of mankind.

Phillip T. Robinson - Society for the Renewal of Nature Conservation in Liberia, West Africa

"Love said, come taste my meate,
So I did sit and eate." John Donne's verse has endeared itself to countless undergraduates, not least through suspicion of a triple-entendre (at the very least). Be that as it may, the book under review is about ordinary eating of ordinary meat, specifically wild mammal meat. It supports the traditional consensus view that humans evolved from a mostly-vegetarian ape-like ancestor with a small brain, with the evolution of sociability, intelligence, and cooperation being due in large part to the exigencies of meat-eating. Meat is good food for the growing brain, among other things, but hunting--in an animal lacking fangs and claws--tends to require a great deal of cooperation. (In fact, even such fanged creatures as lions and wolves depend on exquisite cooperation within complex social systems.) Humans evolved in Africa, which seems less well endowed with easily exploited vegetable foods than some other continents, forcing more dependence on hunting and scavenging. The present book summarizes the enormous recent advances in our understanding of human evolution. A combination of archaeology, nutrition studies, and comparative studies of other primates have provided new proofs for the old model. It looks as if humans progressed (if that is the word) from near-vegetarians two million years ago to people who, at the dawn of agriculture 10,000 or 12,000 years ago, were eating anywhere from 10% to nearly 100% animal foods--average perhaps 20%. Neither the view of humans as natural vegetarians nor the view of humans as savage "killer apes" can be supported.
The book suffers from two flaws: first, over-reliance on a very few contemporary hunter-gatherer groups--especially the Hadza, who hunt with bows and metal-tipped poisoned arrows. These are a far cry from the crude stone tools of early hominids. Second, the authors seem a bit unclear on whether human advance was due more to meat as a food, or hunting as an activity, or omnivorous foraging (with hunting as only one part). I vote for the last alternative. We have evidence enough to make it reasonably clear that human skills in finding and processing vegetable food went right along with improvements in hunting. By widening their ethnographic net, the authors would have had to deal with hunter-gatherers who relied overwhelmingly on vegetable foods, often cooperatively produced, harvested, and/or processed. The Australian aboriginals and the Native Americans of what is now the western US come to mind.
The serious student of human foodways should definitely read this book! And the less serious meat-lover can revel in shoving it under the noses of those vegetarians who insist that theirs is the "natural" way.

This is a great book, but th[is] version ...is a cheap xerox copy of the original. The illustrations are of very poor quality and it's not worth [the item price]. I sent it back.

The sixty articles in this book date from the early l960s to the early 1990s, but are not likely to become obsolete soon. Probably the most controversial paper is the one that tries to show that we are not all descended from one set of parents. Recent DNA evidence, however, is not all that clear. One article on women might raise eyebrows. It claims that men were the achievers, innovators, AND producers of society. Two papers on evolution (Chapters 56 and 57) are thought provoking. The first says that races are a byproduct of past selective pressures and are no longer distinct. The other says that as late as 1979, one-quarter of introductory physical anthropoly books still argued for the validity of the race concept! Excellent supplemental material for a college course in biology. Others will find it tedious.