A Primate's Memoir

Love, Death and Baboons

The mesmerising story of Robert Sapolsky's twenty-one years in remote Kenya with a troop of Savannah baboons.

One of the most engrossing, exhilarating and irreverent books on Africa and its wildlife ever published

Smart, stylish, distinctive... A magnificent tale of morality among the hamfisted machiavellians

Splendidly written and entertaining... ACE.  Buy this book now

Flies along like a well-paced and finely crafted novel...[giving] us a cast of characters as memorably colorful as any that Dickens ever created

One of the best scientist-writers of our time

Very funny... Bill Bryson turned naturalist

This engrossing account of Robert Sapolsky's life in science...is brilliantly informative...and heartbreakingly acute

Robert M. Sapolsky is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation 'Genius Grant'. His previous books includes the international bestseller Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, The Trouble with Testosterone, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers and A Primate's Memoir.

Discover this remarkable account of twenty-one years in remote Kenya with a troop of Savannah baboons from the New York Times bestselling author of Behave. 
 
'One of the best scientist-writers of our time' Oliver Sacks 
 
Brooklyn-born Robert Sapolsky grew up wishing he could live in the primate diorama in the Museum of Natural History. At school he wrote fan letters to primatologists and even taught himself Swahili, all with the hope of one day joining his primate brethren in Africa. But when, at the age of twenty-one, Sapolky's dream finally comes true he discovers that the African bush bears little resemblance to the tranquillity of a museum. 
 
This is the story of the next twenty-one years as Sapolsky slowly infiltrates and befriends a troop of Savannah baboons. Alone in the middle of the Serengeti with no electricity, running water or telephone, and surviving countless scams, culinary atrocities and a surreal kidnapping, Sapolsky becomes ever more enamoured with his adopted baboon troop - unique and compelling characters in their own right - and he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevails. 
 
 'A Primate's Memoir is the closest the baboon is likely to come - and it's plenty close enough - to having its own Iliad' New York Times Review of Books 
 
Exhilarating, hilarious and poignant, A Primate's Memoir is a uniquely honest window into the coming-of-age of one of our greatest scientific minds.

The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Behave

The bestselling exploration of why humans behave as they do

A groundbreaking synthesis of the entire science of human behaviour by 'one of the best scientist-writers of our time' (Oliver Sacks)

Awe-inspiring … This is the best scientific book written for non-specialists that I have ever read. You will learn more about human nature than in any other book I can think of, and you will be inspired

It’s no exaggeration to say that Behave is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read

Behave is the best detective story ever written, and the most important. If you've ever wondered why someone did something – good or bad, vicious or generous – you need to read this book. If you think you already know why people behave as they do, you need to read this book. In other words, everybody needs to read it. It should be available on prescription (side effects: chronic laughter; highly addictive). They should put Behave in hotel rooms instead of the Bible: the world would be a much better, wiser place

Magisterial … This extraordinary survey of the science of human behaviour takes the reader on an epic journey … Sapolsky makes the book consistently entertaining, with an infectious excitement at the puzzles he explains … a miraculous synthesis of scholarly domains

Truly all-encompassing … detailed, accessible, fascinating

Rarely does an almost 800-page book keep my attention from start to finish, but Behave is exceptional in its scale, scope, detail and writing style ... Sapolsky places what makes us special in the wider context of humans as animals with brains that are fundamentally similar to those of other species. It is the first book that does so comprehensively enough to qualify as a guide to human behaviour

A miraculous book, by far the best treatment of violence, aggression, and competition ever. Its depth and breadth of scholarship are amazing, building on Sapolsky’s own research and his vast knowledge of the neurobiology, genetic, and behavioral literature. All this is done brilliantly with a light and funny touch that shows why Sapolsky is recognized as one of the greatest teachers in science today

A great writer and a superb guide to human nature, Sapolsky shows you how all the perspectives and systems connect, and he makes you laugh and marvel along the way. A beautifully crafted work about the biology of morality

Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind

Behave is like a great historical novel, with excellent prose and encylopedic detail. It traces the most important story that can ever be told

As wide as it is deep, this book is colorful, electrifying, and moving.  Sapolsky leverages his deep expertise to ask the most fundamental questions about being human

Marvellous. Behave gives us the knowledge of how to manifest more of our best selves and less of our worst, individually and as a society

Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit

One of the finest natural history writers around

Robert Sapolsky's students must love him ... witty, erudite and passionate about clear communication ... the implications of fascinating scientific findings are illuminated through topical stories ... then Sapolsky reaches for the big, synthetic pay-offs, examining how, together, these insights can enhance our understanding of the forces that lead to tribalism, violence, dehumanization and war - as well as tolerance, empathy and peace ... The analysis is arresting and the writing is often moving ... It is impossible not to deeply admire a project bold enough to ask an entire field to work to create a more just and peaceful world

Sapolsky’s book shows in exquisite detail how culture, context and learning shape everything our genes, brains, hormones and neurons do

An ambitious and amusingly written explanation of why humans act as they do

For sheer ambition, it's hard to beat Robert Sapolsky's new book. Its goal is nothing less than a new way of seeing ourselves

A crammed compendium of scientific findings, organized in an ingenious way

There has never been a better time for Robert Sapolsky's Behave: the Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst to appear. For those as perplexed and conflicted as me about such seismic political events as Brexit and the election of US President Donald Trump, the book helps not only to tease apart the factors that can lead people to behave in ways that seem to make no sense, but also to explain our own reaction. There is no part of the current craziness of the world this book does not touch, from terrorism and nationalism to nuclear posturing and ethnic cleansing… It is brilliant and insightful, lucid and conversational, authoritative, and fair to different points of view. It is the best guide I know of to the vicissitudes of human behaviour, an antidote to sensationalist easy answers… Behave is the antidote to all those pop psychology books that promise the secret of why we do what we do

A wonderfully lucid, scholarly and witty account of the biological basis of human behavior… Once you have read it, you will see neither yourself nor your fellow humans in the same way as before

A masterly cross-disciplinary scientific study of human behaviour.

Excellent – we get fascinating analysis of how we think, how we emote, how we act.

Why do human beings behave as they do? 
 
'Awe-inspiring... You will learn more about human nature than in any other book I can think of' Henry Marsh, bestselling author of And Finally. 
 
We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness: is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other? 
 
Every act of human behaviour has multiple layers of causation, spiralling back seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, even centuries, right back to the dawn of time and the origins of our species. 
 
In the epic sweep of history, how does our biology affect the arc of war and peace, justice and persecution? How have our brains evolved alongside our cultures? 
 
This is the exhilarating story of human morality and the science underpinning the biggest question of all: what makes us human? 
 
'One of the best scientist-writers of our time' Oliver Sacks

And Other Lessons in Our Lives as Animals

Monkeyluv

Funny, serious, important essays about how the human animal functions.

The prose is perfectly pitched: Sapolsky writes in a jocular, entertaining style without ever pandering to the presumed ignorance of his readers. And he expresses infectious enthusiasm, especially when he is reporting on new experiments performed by colleagues in his field

Sapolsky, who has a weakness for Martian jokes, is a bona fide boffin, but he looks beyond the lab for his case studies, assembling a cast that includes Sandra Bullock and a love-struck baboon named Jonathan. This highly readable book will both inform and enlarge your appreciation of the mystery of existence

The author of Monkeyluv, an entertaining collection of essays about humans and animals, is also a luminary among that rare breed - the funny scientist. These essays on genetic wars between men and women, dreams, bad moods, ambiguity and stress are...a combination of Oliver Sacks and David Foster Wallace

Sapolsky gives us these and many more intriguing gene factoids, but he also explains the elaborate nature/nurture interactions in which they are embedded...the book is a witty blend of anecdote and analysis

Compelling. His spirit of intellectual adventuring is infectious

Described by Oliver Sacks as 'one of the best scientist-writers of our time', Robert M. Sapolsky here presents the human animal in all its quirkiness and diversity. 
 
In these remarkable essays, Sapolsky once again deploys his compassion and insights into the human condition to tell us who, why and how we are. Monkeyluv touches on themes such as sexuality, aggression, love, parenting, religion, ageing, and mental illness. He ponders such topics as our need to seek out beauty; why our preferences in food become fixed; why we are sexually attracted to one another; why Alzheimer's disease tends to be a post-menopausal phenomenon; and why grandmothers buying groceries for their grandchildren are part of nature's Darwinian logic.

Robert M Sapolsky

A bravura performance, well worth reading for the pleasure of Sapolsky’s deeply informed company … he makes a moving case that [our lack of freedom is] a reason to live with profound forgiveness and understanding … absorbing and compassionate

Excellent . . . Outstanding for its breadth of research, the liveliness of the writing, and the depth of humanity it conveys

[A] highly entertaining account of why … we should and must overcome the infuriating conspiracy of mind that insists we are the authors of our actions. Anyone who believes otherwise needs to read it

Wonderfully readable ... humorous and warm and humane

[A] witty, erudite, imaginative and deeply humane new book&hellip; [The] case that Sapolsky makes for a transition from a criminal-justice system based on blame and retribution&hellip;to one founded on blame-free rehabilitation is moving and compelling

Robert Sapolsky explains why the latest developments in neuroscience and psychology explode our conventional idea of Free Will. The book's chock-full of complex and often counter-intuitive ideas. It's also a joy to read. That's because Sapolsky is not only one of the world's most brilliant scientists, but also an immensely gifted writer who tells this important story with wit and compassion. It's impossible to recommend this book too highly. Reading it could change your life

In his usual frank and amusing style, Robert Sapolsky argues that free will is an illusion. His stance is both hard to accept and hard to deny. An utterly fascinating topic with mind-boggling implications for human morality

Frans de Waal, author of Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist

Witty and engaging, Determined is also a goldmine of fascinating information (most of it accessible even to those of us who aren’t scientifically literate) about neuroscience; philosophy; chaos theory; emergent complexity; quantum indeterminacy; evolving knowledge of the causes of epilepsy, schizophrenia, and autism; and, of course, the impact of nature and nurture on decision-making

Sapolsky’s decades of experience studying the effects of the interplay of genes and the environment on behavior shine brightly . . . He provides compelling examples that bad luck compounds . . . convincingly argues against claims that chaos theory, emergent phenomena, or the indeterminism offered by quantum mechanics provide the gap required for free will to exist

Fascinating, provocative and profound. This book tackles all sorts of big issues: how the human brain works, what makes us different, and what underlies everything we do. If Sapolsky is right, we might need to rethink justice and law, and for each of us personally, what it really takes to be happy and successful

Daniel M. Davis, author of The Secret Body

Provocative … If Sapolsky’s ideas were widely accepted they would lead to profound societal changes, not least within the criminal justice system

Fascinating and challenging - though I'm not sure if I really had a say in the matter

The Science of Life Without Free Will

What if free will is an illusion? In Determined one of the world’s greatest scientists of human behaviour overturns one of our most powerful beliefs – that we are the authors of our own actions – and sets out the disturbing yet liberating implications of accepting this fact. 
 
As Robert Sapolsky shows, everything we think and do is caused by the luck of our biology and the influence of our environment, and ultimately both are beyond our control. In a world without free will, we must completely rethink what we mean by choice, responsibility, morality and justice. Sapolsky’s extraordinary book does exactly this, guiding us toward a profoundly fairer, more humane way of living together.

Robert M Sapolsky

Praise for Determined

A bravura performance, well worth reading for the pleasure of Sapolsky’s deeply informed company … he makes a moving case that [our lack of freedom is] a reason to live with profound forgiveness and understanding … ...

Excellent . . . Outstanding for its breadth of research, the liveliness of the writing, and the depth of humanity it conveys

[A] highly entertaining account of why … we should and must overcome the infuriating conspiracy of mind that insists we are the authors of our actions. Anyone who believes otherwise needs to read it

A bravura performance, well worth reading for the pleasure of Sapolsky’s deeply informed company … he makes a moving case that [our lack of freedom is] a reason to live with profound forgiveness and understanding … ...

Excellent . . . Outstanding for its breadth of research, the liveliness of the writing, and the depth of humanity it conveys

[A] highly entertaining account of why … we should and must overcome the infuriating conspiracy of mind that insists we are the authors of our actions. Anyone who believes otherwise needs to read it

A bravura performance, well worth reading for the pleasure of Sapolsky’s deeply informed company … he makes a moving case that [our lack of freedom is] a reason to live with profound forgiveness and understanding … ...

Excellent . . . Outstanding for its breadth of research, the liveliness of the writing, and the depth of humanity it conveys

[A] highly entertaining account of why … we should and must overcome the infuriating conspiracy of mind that insists we are the authors of our actions. Anyone who believes otherwise needs to read it

Books by Robert M Sapolsky

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