Vanessa Woods, The Bonobo Handshake

Start: 06/03/2010 7:00 pm

"Funny, adventurous, and heartbreaking. Woods takes us with her to darkest Africa to meet our nearest relative, the nearly extinct bonobo. This must-read book illuminates extraordinary courage in both people and animals."

Sarah Gruen, author of Water for Elephants

"Don’t think that this is just a book about apes. It’s a love story, an adventure story, and a political education about a country that has seen more tragedy and inhumanity than you can imagine. Above all, it’s an introduction to creatures who have every claim to being more human, in the best sense of the word, than we are."

Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost

Vanessa Woods is a research scientist and internationally published author and journalist. She works at Duke University in North Carolina and Lola ya Bonobo in Congo, where she studies the cognitive development of chimpanzees and bonobos. Woods is part of the Hominoid Psychology Research Group, which compares the psychology of humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos. Woods is also the main Australian/New Zealand feature writer for Discover Channel, and her writing has appeared in various publications including BBC Wildlife, New Scientist and Travel Africa. She is the author of the memoir Its Every Monkey For Themselves, published in Australia.