Synopsis
An authoritative biography of the First Family of anthropology--Louis, Mary, and Richard Leakey--shows how they laid the foundations for what is known about the origins of man and reveals their jealousies and rivalries with one another. 30,000 first printing.
Reviews
Born in Kenya, Louis Leakey (1903- 1972), son of a dynamic missionary, grew up among Kikuyu natives. At Cambridge in 1923, a rugby injury left him with post-traumatic epilepsy, necessitating a prolonged leave that marked the beginning of his fossil-hunting career. In 1933, one month after his first wife, Frida, gave birth to their son Colin, Louis announced that he was leaving her for one of his students, Mary Nicol. Over the next four decades, the husband-and-wife Leakey team made stunning discoveries of hominid fossils that supported Louis's theory that humankind originated in Africa and was millions of years older than most experts had assumed. In a revelatory biography that strips away the aura surrounding a legendary family, Oregon-based science writer Morell maintains that by the late 1950s, the Leakey marriage had deteriorated into a business partnership. Louis had extramarital affairs and fell ardently in love with his young proteges, chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall and gorilla-watcher Dian Fossey. His son Richard, by this account, had a bitter professional rivalry with his domineering father and, fearing that Louis would try to ease him out, kept from him his 1968 diagnosis of terminal kidney disease, which he overcame with a kidney transplant operation in 1980. Morell balances grand scientific adventure with personal chronicle in an extraordinary group portrait that was written with the family's cooperation yet is not authorized. Photos. Newbridge Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
It's so fitting that a family, a complex and contentious one at that, discovered the roots of humankind's many-branched family tree. As the Leakeys unearthed one astonishing hominid fossil after another, they toppled cherished theories and shibboleths about our origins and, after decades of exhaustive fieldwork, established Africa as our first home, pushed back the time frame of our evolution by millions of years, and revealed our connection to other primates. The famous "Leakey luck" was manifest in Louis, the brilliant, passionate, not to say excessive, patriarch; in Mary, the consummate scientist and a woman of awesome determination and discipline; and in their angry, ambitious, and exceptionally talented son Richard, who both fought and fulfilled the promise of his inheritance. Their work aroused bitter controversies, inspired media frenzies, and set the course for the entire field of paleoanthropology. Morell has done a truly superb job of telling the Leakeys' compelling and manifold tale. Not only does she bring each of these extraordinary personalities to life, but she also explains the significance of their quest and conveys the drama of their painfully competitive relationships and their struggle to validate their hotly contested findings. This is an utterly fascinating book from start to finish and destined to be a cornerstone in the history of our search for our ancestors. Donna Seaman
A science writer for the New York Times Magazine and other journals celebrates the leading family in anthropology.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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