In Quest of the Sacred Baboon: A Scientist's Journey

Hans Kummer Princeton, $16.95, £12.95

The hamadryas baboon was held sacred by the ancient Egyptians, but its highly complex social organization makes it just as intriguing to modern primatologists such as Hans Kummer, whose fascinating book about the hamadryas, In Quest of the Sacred Baboon: A Scientist's Journey (Princeton, $16.95, £12.95), is out now in paperback. “Truly multidimensional⃛. It is a distillation of decades of making sense of the most complex social organization of any species of non-human primate⃛. From the arresting first page of the preface, which takes the reader straight into the bush, to the moving final paragraph that will resonate with long-term field workers, it is compelling⃛. The thoughtful, personal disclosures are uncommonly telling, and deserve wide attention”, W. C. McGrew, Nature 379, 410; (1996).

figure a