| View Larger Image | Orangutan Odyssey | Hardcoverby Birute Mary Galdikas (Author)
| List Price: | $39.95 | |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | Harry N. Abrams | | Page Count: | 144 Pages | | Publication Date: | October 01, 1999 | | Sales Rank: | 859,959th |
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
For more than 25 years, renowned primatologist Birut Galdikas has lived among the orangutans of Borneo, studying their habits, defending them against loggers and poachers, and nurturing their orphaned youngsters. Now, with this extraordinary pictorial essay, Galdikas brings to life her work with these shy and endangered red apes. Taking readers to her remote rainforest headquarters, Galdikas draws on Karl Ammann's unparalleled photographs to present intimate portraits of the individual orangutans she's come to know and offers rare glimpses of their behavior in the wild. With an introduction by famed chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall-who, like Galdikas and Dian Fossey, is a Louis Leakey protge-this is a superb and revelatory volume for nature and animal lovers everywhere. 100 photographs in full color, 1 map, 10 11/4 x 10 11/4" BIRUT M. F. GALDIKAS, who received her Ph.D. from UCLA, teaches at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, and at Indonesia's Universi tas Nasional. She is president of the Orangutan Foundation International in Los Angeles. NANCY BRIGGS, who has long worked with Galdikas in both Los Angeles and Borneo, is professor of communications at California State University, Long Beach, and director of education at the Orangutan Foundation International. Karl Ammann is an award-winning wildlife photographer based in Kenya. |
Amazon.com Review
In the 1960s, the legendary paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey encouraged a trio of remarkable woman scientists--Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas--to study the world's great primates. In her memoir Reflections of Eden, written long after her fellow "trimates" published theirs, Galdikas described her efforts at Camp Leakey to rehabilitate ex-captive orangutans and release them into the nearby Borneo rainforest. Those rehabilitation efforts became the center of controversies that swirl around Galdikas and the organization she helped found, Orangutan Foundation International. A debate about the effectiveness of rehabilitation reached a fever pitch in the late 1990s with the publication of several articles and books about Galdikas by Canadian novelist Linda Spalding. In A Dark Place in the Jungle, Spalding suggests that Galdikas's efforts in the name of conservation may in fact harm wild orangutan populations. Galdikas herself is characterized as an imperious and careless scientist, which no doubt played a role in Galdikas's decision in July 1999 to sue Spalding for libel. What then are we to make of this book by Galdikas and her longtime collaborator Nancy Briggs? There is no dispute whatsoever about their primary message: orangutans are seriously endangered. Palm oil plantations, bush fires, and other intense human pressures are destroying millions of acres of orangutan habitat. The recently deposed Indonesian government of Suharto was notoriously corrupt and adopted policies that led to large-scale deforestation, although its legacy is treated gingerly by Galdikas, who lives there when she isn't teaching at the University of British Columbia. The close-up photographs that accompany their text show orangutans as full of personality, mischief, and devotion as humans. Perhaps, as Spalding suggests, that's part of the problem. It may be too easy to project anthropocentric values onto orangutans, which, after all, share 97 percent of their genetic heritage with humans. It is difficult to judge either case on its merits since the books share similar flaws: neither presents notes or bibliography to document its arguments. So read them both. The gravely threatened orangutans deserve as much attention as they can get. --Pete Holloran |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 3 reviews)
|
IF EVOLUTION IS TRUE, WHY ARE THERE STILL APES AND MONKEYS??? by Ashtar Command (Stockholm, Sweden)  5 Stars
December 07, 2008
If evolution is true, why are there still apes and monkeys???
Well?
:D
| |
Kusasi- Dominant Male of the Orangutans by Aja Rae Bijja (South Mountain, PA USA) 5 Stars
December 21, 2007
This is a great book about the orangutans of Borneo that are being studied by Birute M.F. Galdikas. It talks about Princess, Uranus, Yaiyat, and the powerful Kusasi. Great for people who love Orangutans and want to help save their enviroment.
| |
Orangutan Odyssey 5 Stars
October 31, 2000
This book has wonderful historical information relating to the first accounts of orangutans and other animals like apes and chimpanzees. It also recounts how society's perception of these wonderful animals has changed over time, and how oragutans tie into our concept of human evolution. There a tons of just great photos and little stories.
| |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo
by Birute M. F. Galdikas (Author)
Ever since Jane Goodall unlocked the mysteries of wild chimpanzees, and Dian Fossey lived among mountain gorillas, the world has been captivated by primates and the people who study them. Here, at last, is the riveting story of Birute Galdikas, a pioneering primatologist who has spent much of her life studying orangutans. In 1971, twenty-five-year-old Galdikas began living in the remote jungles of Indonesian Borneo, where she encountered menacing poachers, blood-sucking leeches, and swarms of...
| 
| Great Ape Odyssey
by Birute Mary Galdikas (Author), Karl Ammann (Photographer)
Early in her career in the late 1960s, Biruté Galdikas was handpicked, along with Jane Goodall and the late Dian Fossey, by the renowned paleontologist Louis Leakey to go out into the world and study the great apes. She went on to dedicate her life to observing orangutans in their natural habitat and has become one of the world's leading authorities on orangutans. "I had reached the point where it was hard for me to see the differences between apes and humans," Galdikas once admitted on a 48...
| 
| Orangutans: Wizards of the Rain Forest
by Anne E. Russon (Author)
Praise for the previous edition: "A fascinating firsthand account of the behavior and intelligence of orangutans, Russon's book is also an account of the successes, failures, and politics of orangutan rehabilitation in the forests of Borneo and Sumatra... The book is lavishly illustrated with full color photographs." - Choice The only great apes found in Asia, these arboreal wizards are by nature elusive and solitary, and inhabit nearly inaccessible tropical rainforests. The tragedy is...
| 
| Among Orangutans: Red Apes and the Rise of Human Culture
by Carel van Schaik (Author), Perry van Duijnhoven (Photographer)
"The local people know him as the ""Man of the Forest,"" who refused to speak for fear of being put to work. And indeed the bear-like Sumatran orangutan, with his moon face, lanky arms, and shaggy red hair, does seem uncannily human; one of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, the orangutan may have much to tell us about the origins of human intelligence, technology, and culture. In this book one of the world's leading experts on Sumatran orangutans, working in collaboration with...
| 
| Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape
by Frans B. M. de Waal (Author), Frans Lanting (Author)
Primatologist Frans de Waal and wildlife photographer Frans Lanting present the most up-to-date perspective available on the bonobo, the least known of the great apes. 75 color plates.
|
|
|
