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Autumn Books

Nature 455, 864-865 (16 October 2008) | doi:10.1038/455864a; Published online 15 October 2008

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Psychology's pet subject

See associated Correspondence: Pepperberg, Nature 456, 166 (November 2008)

Clive Wynne1

BOOK REVIEWEDAlex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence — and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process

by Irene Pepperberg

HarperCollins: 2008. 240 pp. $23.95

Alex and Me is the conjoined life story of cognitive psychologist Irene Pepperberg and her African grey parrot, Alex. Pepperberg sketches her life from lonely girlhood in Brooklyn, New York, through college and graduate school — she attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology aged 16, and gained a PhD in theoretical chemistry at Harvard University — to her acquisition of Alex in 1977.