The Meeting of Mind and Heart

Robert Sapolsky introduces himself as a young and aspiring scientist. However, the reader may have, upon opening the book, expected a story primarily about a scientist and his relation to his science. However, A Primate's Memoir is not primarily a work about science or about the scientific work completed by a particular researcher and it is not about a particular individual's struggles with science either. The life of 'the mind' is in fact not a particularly prominent part of the book. Instead, it is a work primarily of heart and humanity.

It was Sapolsky's mind that took him to Kenya in the first place and it is Sapolsky's mind that kept him coming back and continuing his research. About that there is no doubt. But the vast majority of the book's pages are not discussions of Sapolsky's research. In fact, most of the...