This book's primary fault is it follows 'In the Shadow of Man' which is a masterpiece of natural and personal discovery. Not to say this is a bad book, but structurally and emotionally less complex. Like an under-accomplished younger sibling struggling to find a unique voice in the shadow of a famous elder brother or sister. Towards the end Goodall does begin to venture beyond Gombe chimp behavior stories to discuss zoos and lab chimps. ( )

Jane Goodall has done decades of groundbreaking research on the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park in Tanzania. This is her account of her work there over thirty years, starting when it was still scientific heresy to describe animals as having thoughts and emotions--even animals so obviously close to us in evolutionary terms as chimpanzees. Goodall didn't have a degree at all, much less in ethology, when Louis Leakey recruited her to study chimpanzees, so she described what she saw in the chimpanzees' behavior. When Leakey arranged funding and sent her to Cambridge University in 1962 to get a PhD in ethology, Goodall discovered the narrow view of the scientific establishment. In order to get her scientific work published, she pushed back where she could and compromised where she had to, and gradually had an impact on the silly practice of talking about higher mammals as inanimate objects.

But this book is mostly about the chimpanzees of Gombe, their interactions with each other and with her. Chimpanzee society is complex and in many ways very familiar, though also very different. Biology alone means that sexual relations among chimpanzees are rather different than among humans. Yet chimpanzees have clear family bonds, and maternal child-rearing skills make a significant impact on the kind of adults the young chimps mature into them. She observed not only tool use, but tool making, and suggested, to the skepticism of many, that different chimp communities would prove to have different tool-making cultures and practices. (She was right.) I remember the outrage and distress when that mean Jane Goodall claimed chimpanzees engaged in war against other chimp communities they were in conflict with. (She documented it happening between two chimp communities in Gombe.)

The personalities of the chimpanzees of Gombe are beautifully and compellingly described, and, careful observer that she is, it's highly informative. Politics and power structures among chimpanzees, our closest relatives, are quite recognizable. On the one hand, chimps aren't going to be building multistory buildings anytime in the next few millennia. On the other hand, we can definitely see ourselves in them in many ways.

It's a fascinating look at chimpanzees by one of the people on this planet who knows them best. Recommended.

I bought this audiobook. ( )

Anything by Jane Goodall is good. ( )

4.5 stars

This was originally written in 1990, 30 years after Jane Goodall went to Gombe National Park in Tanzania to study chimpanzees My edition was published in 2010, so there is even extra info with a preface and an afterword written by Jane in 2009. This continues/updates her first book on the chimps of Gombe, In the Shadow of Man.

I read In the Shadow of Man a number of years ago, but I loved revisiting the same chimps and their offspring, and following them later in the their lives! Jane is also an adamant activist/conservationist, so at the end of the book, after all the extra chimp information and updates (which really is the bulk of the book), she writes a little bit about human-raised chimps, chimps used in experiments, chimps losing their habitat, etc. There are a number of photos of the chimps included, as well. Overall, I really really enjoyed reading this! ( )

Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe – J. Goodall
4 stars

In 1971, Jane Goodall published In the Shadow of Man, documenting her first ten years of studying chimpanzees in their native environment. Through a Window, published in 1990, continues the story for a further 20 years. I read the first book not long after it was published and I’ve read several of her more recent books, but somehow, I’d missed this one.

This book follows original chimp colony and the descendents of the individuals featured in the first book. Although many of the observations and conclusions presented in this book seem somewhat dated, I enjoyed reading the chapters devoted to different individual chimps. Goddall writes simply, with great empathy for her subjects and with modest authority in her conclusions. She documents the social dynamics of the chimpanzees, but is also provides a record of how our human perspective has changed since the mid –twentieth century.
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