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An excellent novel about the Gombe Chimpanzee Group as told in an earnest, charming and talkative manner by Dr. Goodall. Fascinating read on the intricate relationships between Chimps, following lineages and discussing the war and chimp-brutality that came between some of them.
No review is necessary for this iconic scientist, but I particularly loved reading her takedown of the mansplainers that tried to dismiss her early work. Very interesting chapter at the end regarding her insights about animal testing.
Personally, I was looking forward to this book. The first few chapters really enticed me, but as I kept reading I began to feel like it was too repetitive and had too many chimps it was focusing on. I could not keep track of all the names! The writing style was good, but I just found it dull towards the late middle.
I really enjoyed this. It was a little difficult to keep all the names straight, especially since the first letter of the names of offspring are the same as the mother's, but other than that it's a relatively easy read and has lots of memorable scenes of both exciting action as well as humor. In particular, the more disturbing behavior is rendered in gut-wrenching detail and you feel the sadness when a favorite is found dead. Even though I've read about chimpanzees before, I learned some new thi...
I have always been an animal lover. My earliest reading memories involve blue whales because on a trip to Chicago’s Field Museum Of Natural History, I was mesmerized by the skeletons and the next day my mother took me to our local library where over the next few months I proceeded to check out every book on whales and dolphins I could find. This was at the ripe age of three. Over time this appreciation of animals has included supporting the World Wildlife Fund, visiting zoos, dreaming about bein...
Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe has a slow start. If you are bored at the beginning do not give up! By the end I was captivated. I came to feel close to the chimps. They had become my friends and I their fan. I related to them as to fellow human beings.Today it is common knowledge that animals have both emotions and intelligence. When Jane Goodall began her work in 1960 with the chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, behavioral psychology ruled. Her views were criticized...
To be read by those of you who love our beautiful and so rich Wildlife
Chimpanzees manifest the same behavioral patterns of strategic warfare, territoriality, and xenophobia, that humans do. The leading male chimps are those that chase top status and are obsessed with dominance over simple short-term material goals such as food and reproduction, similar to our own psychopathological leaders/CEOs. They also manifest our more pacific or cooperative repertoire of behaviors and gestures-- kissing, embracing, stooping obsequiously to community members of higher status,
I have read every book that Jane Goodall wrote. She has an easy-going writing style that shares scientific principals easily with the layman. Probably because when she started, she was little more than a novice, going from secretarial school to the Gombe to study chimpanzees. She stayed there on and off for thirty years. This book, Through a Window (Houghton Mifflin 1990) shares her thoughts and conclusions on what she learned from that stretch of time with the chimpanzees.The book reads like an...
I have admired Jane Goodall ever since seeing "Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees" on TV when I was quite young. This book didn't disappoint. It is primarily a chronicle of the first thirty years of the work observing chimpanzee behavior at the Gombe reserve on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. There is a shorter summary at the end which discusses the intervening years with updates on the inhabitants of the reserve.I have to agree with other reviews that I have read that say this book reads more
It’s written like a novel/drama about chimpanzee social life which is just not interesting to me. I only enjoyed at the end where she talked about what she learned from the observations and how they were used in a wider context scientifically
This book coupled with its predecessor (In the Shadow of Man) should be mandatory reading. What an insight into the human mind. The plethora of fancy and ostentatious material possessions we collect are simply the charging/dominance display of the chimpanzee. We use fancy cars while Mike used empty cans. The corporate heirarchy that we have made for ourselves in every organization is just the social structure of the chimpanzee; replete with similar rules about dominance and submission. Once we u...