Next Of Kin: Amazon.ca: Roger Fouts: Books

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From Amazon.com

For three decades, primatologist Roger Fouts has been involved in language studies of the chimpanzee, the animal most closely related to human beings. Among his subjects was the renowned Washoe, who was "endowed with a powerful need to learn and communicate," and who developed an extraordinary vocabulary in American sign language. Another chimpanzee, Fouts writes, "never made a grammatical error," which turned a whole school of linguistic theory upside down. While reporting these successes, Fouts also notes that chimpanzees are regularly abused in laboratory settings and that in the wild their number has fallen from 5,000,000 to fewer than 175,000 in the last century.

From Library Journal

Having spent most of his career teaching sign language to chimps, Fouts divulges our hairy cousins' opinions on humans.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Customer Reviews

27 Reviews

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4.9 out of 5 stars (27 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Astounding, July 12 2004

By

D. Dash (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees (School & Library Binding)

This book weaves together behavioral research, child psychology, linguistics, oncology, evolution, animal rights and a simple story of two friends who each learn incredible things from the other. The story was so intriguing no matter what topic was being covered that I read all 400 pages in 3 1/2 days. At the risk of sounding melodramatic I literally laughed out loud at points, and broke down in tears at others. Next of Kin demonstrates what man can do at his best as well as his worst.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, July 9 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees (School & Library Binding)

This was the best book I've read in years. It is extremely moving, and just changed me as a person. It made me realize that animals are just like humans, with the same simple needs, food, water, shelter, and most importantly, love and respect. They shouldn't be treated as animals just because they look different.

I think this is a must read for everyone, regardless of whether or not you like animals.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Convinces a skeptical linguist, Jun 28 2004

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Jenifer Larson-hall (Denton, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Next Of Kin (Paperback)

I have just finished reading Roger Fout's Next of Kin book and was very impressed. I am a linguist and am planning to talk about Animal Communication in a Psycholinguistics course I will be teaching this Fall. I had always just accepted the conclusion found in most introductory Linguistics textbooks that what chimps can do is really not very much, doesn't resemble human language, and that people like Dr. Fouts have expanded the notion of what 'language' is to somewhat unacceptable lengths. I accepted that Terrace's work with Nim Chimpsky (which you read about in the book) showed that just those researchers who were highly emotionally involved with their animals were the ones who ridiculously thought that chimpanzees could really produce creative signs. After reading this book I am convinced that chimpanzees are highly intelligent and have been able to learn to use sign language in a way that I would consider langauge. I am also convinced, though not a great animal lover, that treating chimpanzees as research subjects is just inhumane. So I would agree with everyone else that this is an extraordinary book. I highly recommend it, especially to linguists who really have little idea of what Washoe and Loulis are able to communicate in sign language.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars An perfect story of humor, pain and science
As a student of Dr. Foutes at CWU, we were assigned to read this book as part of his class. Before I started reading it, I thought it would be another boring psych book. Read more

Published on Jun 27 2003 by Zachary A. Kroger

4.0 out of 5 stars Compelling stories, somewhat less compelling arguments
"Next of Kin" is really several stories interwoven into one book. It is first and foremost the story of a chimp, Washoe, but also of the journey on which she takes Roger Fouts... Read more

Published on April 9 2003 by Bukkene Bruse