Visions of Caliban: On Chimpanzees and People
For the last 35 years British biologist Jane Goodall has been living among African chimpanzees, recording their behavior and explaining it in a number of fine books. With literature professor Dale Peterson, Goodall here looks at the place of chimpanzees in the popular imagination, from Shakespeare's play The Tempest (whence the book's title) to David Letterman's monkey-cam, while Goodall recaps her work among chimps and decries their probably unhappy future. As she tells us in chilling detail, the chimpanzees' rain forest habitat is on the decline due to consumption of fuel wood as well as industrial logging, and chimps are thus threatened with extinction. The authors even wonder whether, given the relentless destruction of the chimpanzees' home, the poor creatures might not be better off in zoos. Peterson's and Goodall's point-counterpoint makes for fascinating, if somber, reading.
