Gorillas in the Mist

Dian-fossey

ISBN 10: 0833505238 ISBN 13: 9780833505231

Publisher: Bt Bound, 1999

In Dian Fossey's own words, here is the riveting account of her thirteen years in the remote African rain forests with the greatest of the great apes. As only she could, Dian Fossey combines her personal adventure story with fascinating scientific reporting in this landmark book about one of our closest primate relatives, the endangered mountain gorilla. Although Dr. Fossey's work ended tragically with her murder, Gorillas in the Mist, now the basis for a major motion picture, remains an enthralling testament to one of the longest field studies of primates as it reveals Fossey's remarkable efforts to ensure a future for the African rain forest and the few hundred gorillas that remain there.

Review:

In 1963, an occupational therapist from Kentucky, in uncertain health and spirits, traveled to central Africa in the quixotic hope of seeing a mountain gorilla in its natural habitat. Dian Fossey had read everything she could about the reclusive and much-feared animal, and she returned from her trip convinced that most of the books were wrong.

During her seven-week stay in Africa, Fossey had a chance encounter with the famed primatologists Mary and Louis Leakey, who encouraged her to follow her dream of living among the mountain gorillas and learning their ways. In 1967 she did just that, setting up a camp on the slopes of the 14,000-foot Virunga Volcanoes of Rwanda and studying four gorilla families there. Although it took them some time to accept Fossey's presence among them, she was immediately impressed by their peaceful nature and by their generous, guileless behavior--so unlike the images found in popular culture.

But, Fossey discovered, despite their peaceable way of life, the gorillas had many enemies in the form of poachers who hunted them for their hands, skins, and heads--ghastly remains sold to the tourist market. Much of Fossey's thoughtful but often rightly angry memoir Gorillas in the Mist is a well-reasoned plea for the protection of the gorillas and the suppression of the poachers' black market. That argument found a wide audience when her book was published in 1983, but Fossey's work remains unfinished: she was murdered, probably by those very poachers, in 1985, and today there are fewer than 650 mountain gorillas in the wild. To read Gorillas in the Mist is a first step for anyone concerned with their preservation, and that of other wild species everywhere. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

No Bio

• Publisher: Bt Bound
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0833505238
• ISBN 13: 9780833505231
• Binding: Library Binding