A Primate's Memoir

I am only 70 pages into this book and it's already the best thing I've read this year. It's a bit of autobiography by a man who's made a career of studying baboons (PhD Neurology Biology Stanford Kenya blah blah blah). But it is also very bright, funny, and full of harmless adventure.

The stuff on the baboons is very educational, and reminded me a lot of high school. But it's not just "I went to Africa and watched some chimps." He talks about running out of money and doing little scams for food in Nairobi, learning how to dart a baboon with a blowgun, and the discovery that elephants have breasts ("huge, voluptuous, pillowy mounds, complete with cleavage...it is a subject rarely broached in our public schools").

[Update: it gets darker as it goes along - he grows up and Africa gets to be an uglier place. You can skip the stuff about the rough travel, coups, and corrupt local officials (or maybe I'm just jaded from reading Kapucinski's The Soccer War). The stuff on the baboons is great, though - a real tribal history. I'm on the homestretch now and would still highly recommend it.]