Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man [Hardcover]

Although many people know who Jane Goodall is (sometimes confusing her with Dian Fossey), she has become a kind of myth. Films and books have portrayed her as having near-saintly status and a squeaky-clean character, which, though enormously charismatic, has been oversimplified in the media. This book shows her fascinating development from a dreamy child with an active imagination, a menagerie of pets, a talent for leadership in her self-started science club, and not much interest in school ("The Naturalist"), to the more familiar young chimpanzee researcher who fell under the spell of the intelligent apes of Gombe and who also had a series of romantic and professional adventures during a brilliant career ("The Scientist"), to the person who has inspired people all over the world to work to preserve the planet's animals and people, and to dream of a better future ("The Activist"). This book shows her funny, mischievous, thoughtful, and romantic sides, revealing a woman who struggled to make her way in a demanding field and who made enormous personal sacrifices in a great cause. The book is beautifully written, warm, lovingly detailed--a splendid portrait of a magnificent person.

The fact that not only Dr Jane Goodall, but also her family, friends and colleagues gave full cooperation to Dale Peterson in his authorship of this masterful biography, makes this heavily detailed work quite definitive (aside from, or read in addition to, those works written by Goodall herself), and a treat for those interested in her life and work. Dr Goodall's buoyant personality, enthusiasm, and dedication are rendered so clearly, especially in the descriptions of Jane's activism on behalf of chimpanzees, humans and the environment alike, that one cannot help but like her and feel impelled to action.

While remaining respectfully, appropriately, discreet (especially in describing her relationships with her first and second husbands), the personal details that are given are perfectly sufficient to understand how they shaped her life's course. Dr Goodall is, after all, very much a living, breathing person and therefore entitled to as much privacy as her celebrity will allow. Any more detail or airing of dirty laundry (if it existed) would have been tactless at worst and unnecessary at best. In all other areas - personal and professional - the details abound. However, I never considered such generosity of detail to be overwhelming or superfluous. It all served to create incredibly lucid impressions and pictures, and aided in understanding the subject all the better.

I have been reading about Jane Goodall and her work for many years and found all of the previously undisclosed information in this biography - her family history; the extent of the early financial difficulties in establishing and maintaining the Gombe Stream Research Centre; details about the kidnapping of the Gombe students in 1975, and the resulting ransom situation - all utterly fascinating. Upon finishing the last page of this excellent biography I was left feeling an even greater fondness for Dr Goodall than I had previously experienced by reading her many books and watching her television specials.

I also highly recommend Dr Goodall's "In the Shadow of Man"; "The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior" (if you can track down a copy!); and "Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe". In addition, I greatly enjoyed the two editions of Jane Goodall's autobiography in letters, edited and with chapter introductions by Dale Peterson: "Africa in my Blood" and "Beyond Innocence".

Louis Leakey put it best. Jane Goodall's work in Gombe prompted a complete revision in how humans view themselves. The subtitle could well stand as the lead for this book. In this exquisitely detailed biography, Dale Peterson depicts how Jane's personality led to a number of fresh insights about how the other animals live and how science learned new ways to study them. Coming out of a rather obscure and unpromising life, Jane Goodall rose to prominence by unusal methods. She applied a sense of caring, developed through attention to her many pets, to the study of chimpanzees. Lacking any preconceptions about what chimpanzees were "supposed" to do, she was able to learn what they actually did do. To say her approach disturbed many "establishment" researchers is putting it mildly. However, her other major attribute in support of her caring, is persistence.

There's a wonderful irony in the circumstances of Jane's becoming a foremost field primatologist. In an era when women reject being "objectified", it was Louis Leakey's roving eye and philandering habits that propelled Jane into the African bush. Having found evidence of early humans at Olduvai, he wanted some signs of evolutionary links. Chimpanzees, as Darwin had noted a century before, were the most likely indicator. Peterson points out that science was woefully lacking in data on apes. They're elusive and shy. It was Jane Goodall who demonstrated the value of "habituation" - long, enduring and subtle contact with her subjects - that allowed her to see what nobody else had before. Chimpanzees use tools, and they're effective hunters. It was the latter trait, the author notes, that helped Jane and her associates to begin formulating the structure of how chimpanzee society is formed.

Those findings led Jane Goodall to both challenge old, staid thinking about field research and chimpanzee life in particular. More, they resulted in Jane's methods and reports led her to become a major figure in science. Whatever Leakey's carnal ambitions toward Jane, he saw her worth. He propelled her through Cambridge's graduate programme almost by brute force as Peterson describes well. Yet, even that endorsement didn't make up for the work Jane had to produce to earn her degree. By that time, she was writing for National Geographic, producing journal papers and books. Oh, yes. She also got married and had a baby.

The richness of detail may deter a few readers of this book. It shouldn't. Jane Goodall, her diminutive stature and uncomplicated expression belie a powerful individual. Peterson isn't simply filling pages, he's building a picture of that individual. That image cannot be imparted with a few strokes of a broad brush. Jane Goodall, under the author's careful touch, isn't a flashy genius, but a dedicated hard worker who built up her own methods one bit at a time. The edifice is indeed imposing as the work led her on speaking tours, teaching assignments, and negotiations for funding, all while raising her family and running a research programme. It's not a simple life Peterson is relating and its complexity cannot be conveyed in a few words. Goodall is an imposing figure in science and the many details are but a start in doing her justice. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

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