Visions of Caliban - by Dale Peterson & Jane Goodall (Paperback)

About the Book

Through their in-depth exploration of our relationship with chimpanzees, Peterson and Goodall demonstrate our close ties to these animals and reveal how distant humans have become from their own place in nature. Both an informative, entertaining collection of stories about research experiences with chimps and a poignant call for a change.

Book Synopsis

Using Shakespeare's play The Tempest and its characters Prospero and Caliban as structural metaphors representing the master-slave relationship between humans and chimpanzees, authors Dale Peterson and Jane Goodall collaborate in this exploration of our interaction with the species that shares more than 98 percent of our genetic makeup. After introducing us to an animal that fashions and uses tools, exploits forest medicines, transmits learned cultural behaviors, and exhibits human-like emotions, Peterson and Goodall present an illuminating, frequently startling study of the current threats to wild chimpanzees' habitats and the many abuses that chimps have endured and continue to face at the hands of humans. They address conservation issues and ethical questions concerning keeping chimpanzees in captivity, whether as pets or for entertainment or research, and offer firsthand evidence of the drastically declining numbers of chimpanzees in the wild.

Through their in-depth exploration of our relationship with chimpanzees, Peterson and Goodall demonstrate our close ties to these animals and also reveal how distant humans have become from their own place in nature. Both an informative, entertaining collection of stories about the authors' research experiences with chimps and a poignant call for a change in our perceptions and treatment of them, Visions of Caliban is a moving and important work.

Review Quotes

""Visions of Caliban" is beautifully written, easily read, and ethically challenging--it just might become primatology's "Silent Spring"."--"Nature"

"["Visions of Caliban" is] compelling, important. . . . in this book science and grace intersect."--"Washington Post"

"A powerful indictment of human cruelty; a convincing plea for animal rights--and altogether superior to the run-of-the-mill nature books crowding the market."--"Kirkus Reviews"

"A study of the relationship between humans and chimps [that] asks, which is 'most brutish'?"--"New York Times Book Review"

"A well-argued case for greater care and conservation [of chimpanzees]."--"New Yorker"

"After reading this book, even a person who laughs at chimpanzees in costume, or believes that chimps should be used to test vaccines for AIDS, must acknowledge that there is something very wrong here."--"New York Newsday"

"Heartrending . . . a gripping account of an extremely important subject."--"Library Journal"

"Riveting and illuminating, this is an important book."--"Booklist"

About the Author

Dale Peterson (Author)
DALE PETERSON is also the author of The Deluge and the Ark: A Journey into Primate Worlds, Chimpanzee Travels: On and Off the Road in Africa, and Storyville, USA (Georgia). He is co-author, with Richard Wrangham, of Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. He teaches at Tufts University.

Jane Goodall (Author)
JANE GOODALL is recognized worldwide for her research and field work with chimpanzees. She has written more than twenty books, including In the Shadow of Man, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior, Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe, and, most recently, the best-selling Reason for Hope.