Jane Goodall is a much more complex person than either her books or the popular conceptions of her, generated by the media, would suggest. These letters show a woman who endured considerable suffering and stress, who maintained her faith and optimism in the face of crushing realities, and who has inspired multitudes to change their views of Africa, of science, of women, and of chimpanzees, but in these letters you feel that she's at kitchen table in your house scribbling away, or that you've received a wonderful letter in your real, not virtual, mailbox. Read this book! You'll be surprised by what you find.

In this book, the reader learns through Goodall's letters about the inner persona of Jane Goodall, her personal blessings and tragedies. While this book is not written with the distinct powerful exuberance of "Africa in My Blood," I do prefer this one simply because to me it revealed more about the woman who lurks beneath the surface. She reveals her deep sense of purpose and her relentless devotion to the chimps shines through. She is, indeed, a woman with a mission. She is also a woman who, like the chimps she has studied for so many years, has come to understand the meaning of love, loss, hope, fear, happiness, heartbreak and enormous setbacks. Goodall's letter writing is superb, with eloquent English undertones which add to the book's quality and style. She has a knack for expressing herself in a poignant and impressive manner. One other book by the same author, also deserving of a five-star rating and highly recommended is "Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey."

Books of letters are normally associated with great female authors of novels, such as Virginia Woolf. In those wonderful volumes, beautiful style and playful use of words adds joy to one's appreciation of the literary works themselves.

So, I did not know what to expect from a book of Jane Goodall's letters. What I found was a most pleasant surprise. The letters provide a deep perspective into the personality of Ms. Goodall and how that contributed to the development of the research methods she used. I found the letters fascinating and very rewarding, despite the fact that they are the opposite of high literary style.

If you are like me, you may primarily know Jane Goodall from her National Geographic television specials. Those were very accessible and enjoyable. But I did not know the background concerning how her pioneering research with chimpanzees was initiated and developed. This book wonderfully filled in that background. Also, I did not know how an attractive young Englishwoman came to become a field scientist in Africa in the first place. Also, the shows made it all seem rather natural and easy.

First, you will come away impressed with what a devoted correspondent she was. Over 16,000 letters were found by the editor to draw from. Now, how many letters have you written in your life? Also, these are mostly long, newsy letters to family, friends, and professional colleagues. If she had been a book reviewer, no one would have believed her production. Remember that she had no computer to help her draft the letters. In fact, she had the balkiest manual typewriters imaginable.

What was even more remarkable to me was that so many of her early letters had been saved. How many letters have you saved from people under the age of 15? That these letters are available is quite a testimony to her relationships with these people, and the impact of her personality.

Then, I did not know that she was a secretarial school graduate when she went to Africa. A few jobs quickly convinced her that she was not cut out for indoor work. She was eventually accepted into a Ph.D. program without ever having attended college! In fact, she had done most of her breakthrough field work before her Ph.D. was even granted. So much for formal education as a way to create new scholarly methods.

Ms. Goodall has a wonderful love of humans and animals that makes no significant distinction between them. I was overwhelmed to read her descriptions of her pets and the chimpanzees and baboons she studied. It is remarkable to read page after page as she gossips with people about the animals by name in more detail and with more sympathy than in much of what she writes about people who were not close to her. This perspective is a fairly unique one, and led to her finding ways to relate to the animals throughout her early years.

There is great humor throughout the letters. Her many descriptions of men becoming interested in her and how she handled them are echoed in her descriptions of the female chimpanzees eluded the hovering males. Humor and laughter came easily to her. You will laugh too at the descriptions of the chimpanzees tickling each other.

You will come away with a great respect for what she accomplished. The difficulties she overcame were incredible, and the work that she put into her research is beyond imagining. She mostly wrote these letters around midnight, after working from 6:30 in the morning . . . often in the driving rain. This was a 7 day a week effort for her. Frustrations were everwhere. Great sequences would occur, but where no one could photograph them. Or the exposures were set wrong on the camera, and the whole roll of film produced nothing. And the camera problems were just the least of it . . . although they were the most maddening to Ms. Goodall. Malaria, shingles, and mysterious diseases affected her and the others she worked with. But her commitment remained strong.

Dale Peterson has done a fine job of selecting the letters and summarizing them at the beginning of each section. My only complaint about the editing was that more footnotes would have been helpful. I was regularly lost in trying to understand who some of the people were whom Ms. Goodall refers to.

I suggest that you give this book to a young person who loves animals. Perhaps something will "click" that will allow that person to see that she or he can live a life devoted to inquiry and closeness with animals.

Follow your instincts!

What could have been an interesting and thought-provoking exploration of the evolutionary roots of human warfare becomes, instead, a mindless exercise in male-bashing. The authors' logic: Chimpanzees raid other chimp territories with the apparent intent to kill or maim members of the other group. These raiding parties are primarily composed of males. Therefore males are the root cause of interpersonal violence.

The field observations of chimps, bonobos and gorillas that have been accumulated over the last several decades provide rich material for comparisons with human behavior. But Wrangham and Peterson force this data into a Procrustean bed at every turn, interpreting every piece of data to support their thesis that every human society is essentially violent, and that it is the males in every society that cause the violence. In their attack on Margaret Mead's description of Samoan society in the 1920s, (not that Mead's work is above criticism) they seek to refute her by citing Samoan crime statistics from the 1970s - long after anyone would describe Samoan society as being uncontaminated by outside influences.

Their attitude towards males is not limited to primates, by the way. They describe male lions' practice of killing the cubs when they take over a pride (thus causing the lionesses to go into estrus and become pregnant by the new pride leaders - an obvious reproductive advantage for the male lions): "In the Serengeti, a quarter of all infants are sacrificed on the altar of male selfishness."

Females in all primate species are pacifists, according to the authors. The peacefulness of bonobo society is attributed to females cooperating to curb male violence. The fact that twenty per cent of chimp raiding parties may be composed of females is mentioned, but conveniently ignored.

The observations of primate behavior that these authors rely on are indeed important. But they must await analysis and interpretation by others with more wisdom and fewer axes to grind.

"Demonic Males" works better as a survey of ape behavior than it does as a sociobiological study. The authors themselves acknowledge that any attempt to relate genetics and behavior is inherently made on a path of matchsticks and those sections (particularly the first third) which suggest a connection between other ape behaviors and those of humans are quite weak. This book probably would have worked much better as a survey of violence in primate species with a Gould-like literary flair. The book works best when discussing the peculiarities of the bonobos and horrifies with tales of chimpanzee genocide. Why not stick to these topics instead of trying to widen the scope to humans? The argument and evidence are simply too flimsy. Their emphasis on Galton's Error (nature or nurture, but not an admixture) is much appreciated, but the nature connection with humans is poorly presented.

It's a fine discussion of ape behavior, the authors' specialty, but a tenuous illustration of how it might relate to humans. Skip the chapters relating to humans' ideas of violence and primitive societies and learn about the darker (and sometimes lighter) sides of our forest cousins.

This work examines two topics that we "civilized" people often find difficult to deal with--violence and sexuality. Though they do look at other species (hyenas and lions, for example), the authors' main focus is modern ape behavior and its possible relationship to human behavior.

The authors outline how four of the five ape species (orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and humans) engage in violent behavior that stems directly from competition for food, reproductive rights, and other resources. According to the authors' interpretation of recent ape observations, gorilla females stay with their dominant male silverback because he protects their infants from other silverbacks who won't hesitate to kill one generation of offspring to ensure the paternity of the next. Underdeveloped orangutan males regularly rape females as a result of being unattractive to females and therefore low on the reproductive "totem pole". Male chimpanzees engage in female battering and intimidation to ensure their dominance over all the females in the group. Predominantly male chimpanzee raiding parties enter neighboring chimpanzee territories, track and find isolated members of the rival group, and then seriously injure or even kill them. The authors argue that with our history of similar behaviors, humans are also a species dominated by "demonic males". (I join the authors in using extreme caution while explaining such behaviors as rape as "natural", and in no way do I imply that such behavior in humans is to be condoned in any way or written off as something over which males have no control.)

The exception to this rule is the fifth ape species, the bonobo. Bonobos strongly resemble chimpanzees and are genetically very closely related to humans, but were only identified as a separate species in the early twentieth century. Bonobos evolved in an area where there was little competition for food resources. Thus, the authors argue, they were free to develop behaviors that weren't involved in assuring that any one ape got the lion's share of resources, to mix a metaphor. Bonobos have a female-dominated society, where the social position of one's mother determines the offspring's social position. Sexual behavior is used as a tension-diffusing tool, and is openly and freely practiced between both sexes and with members of the same sex. Because sex is practiced so freely, there is no way for any male to know if he is the father of any individual offspring, so violence over paternity (such as that evidenced by the gorilla) is eliminated. The result is a kinder, gentler ape.

A fascinating read written in a fast-paced and easily read narrative, this book is a must-read for those interested in the connection between humans and the other apes.

It's is very limited in the number of birds it covers. And the recordings for each bird are minimal at best.

You are better off spending your money on the Stokes 3Cd set of Eastern Birds.

This CD really deserves two reviews, one for its technical merits, which rate highly, and one for its usefulness to the birder, which rates very poorly indeed. So I'll compromise at three stars. If you are on a budget, you can pass this over with the confidence that your pennies will be better spent on Lang Elliott's superb Stokes guide. If you want a little something extra for pleasant listening and have the cash to spend, then go ahead and buy it, but ONLY if the essential Stokes CD is already on your shelf as a definitive reference.

Most of these same criticisms apply to the Peterson guide to western bird songs, which contains two CDs, about 500 species, and must place second to Kevin Colver's western guide in the Stokes series.