Tales from Gombe - Tapa dura

Selection, Christmas 2014 Gift Guide--Globe and Mail (12/06/2014)

The old man to whom this book is dedicated will never read a word of it. Frodo was, after all, a chimpanzee. Yet so remarkable are the animals described in the latest work from husband-and-wife team Anup Shah and Fiona Rogers, that were Frodo alive today I wouldn't have put it past him. Tales from Gombe is an intimate and stunningly illustrated account of the Kasakela chimpanzee community at Gombe Stream on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. These animals have been the subject of intensive study ever since Jane Goodall first made their acquaintance in 1960, but surely no other cameras have lingered on them so lovingly... But this is much more than another African coffee table book. The intensity of the images speaks volumes about the photographers' involvement with their subjects. The portraits, especially, have a Rembrandt-like depth, with every wrinkle and whisker steeped in meaning and emotion... The gripping commentary, meanwhile, not only documents in minute detail the lives, loves and politics of the chimps, but also raises profound questions that extend, by implication, to humanity. And though the authors strive to avoid anthropomorphism, the stories certainly put the reader through the wringer.... One word of warning: this book is about chimpanzees and nothing else. Don't expect a portfolio of Tanzanian landscapes and wildlife. Its focus is single-minded -- and it is all the more powerful as a result.-- (10/24/2014)

With the publication of this mammoth folio, Jane Goodall's famous chimpanzees have garnered another distinction: they are the only great apes to have a family album. Its 300 photographs, taken and annotated by wildlife photographers Anup Shah and Fiona Rogers, are the result of frequent visits to Gombe Forest, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania, beginning in 2001. The images have been arranged in chapters that emphasize notable life passages of individual chimps and changes in the social structure of the chimpanzee community over the course of more than a decade. One can imagine the apes browsing through the heavy, glossy pages: "There's a photo of Fifi's son Faustino, age 12, and another at age 24. He's a moody one, he is, and a bit of a terror when he's angry." "Isn't that Tabora, Tom's younger sister, fishing for a snack in that termite mound? Makes me hungry!" "Remember Kipara? She was something of a loner, and we never understood why she died so suddenly." Chimps of course, can't read, and they don't have coffee tables. Fortunately we humans can, and do, and so we can give thanks to Shah and Rogers for providing this revealing photographic record of our simian cousins.--Natural History (12/31/2014)