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| Eating Apes (California Studies in Food and Culture, 6) | 
| Author: Dale Peterson
Creator: Karl Ammann
Publisher: University of California Press
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $2.37
You Save: $32.63 (93%)
New (20) from $2.37
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 1184265
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 333
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0520230906
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.95980967
EAN: 9780520230903
ASIN: 0520230906
Publication Date: May 1, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: This BOOK IS IN GOOD CONDITION. It is available in stock for immediate dispatch. Although book is new and unused, it may have been subject to some slight shelf wear and (or) a sticker from the publisher on the reverse of the book. Our Customer service is excellent and rest assured we will have a smooth transaction. If you have any Questions or queries please do not hesitate to get in touch with us and we will be pleased to assist you .
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| Customer Reviews:
Killing the real sasquatch July 5, 2003
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
As a primatology student, I am often asked by friends, with a hopeful look in their eyes, if I believe in the existence of Bigfoot, a giant ape dwelling in the forests of the American Northwest. I hate to do it, but I always have to rain on the parade and say there is no compelling evidence for such a creature. I then explain to them that there actually is a Bigfoot, and a Littlefoot as well, living today, but they do not live in America. My friends get excited and ask me where...but their interest rapidly diminishes when I tell them they are the great apes of Africa and Southeast Asia: the gorilla (Bigfoot) and the chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans (Littlefeet). These are beings with self awareness and complex social lives who use tools, eat medicinal plants and pass their traditions down from generation to generation. I feel that we are dulled by familiarity into not realizing how very lucky we are that these amazing, sentient cousins of ours still share the world with us in their tropical strongholds...and hence are not doing what we ought to to prevent their ongoing slaughter. If the current administration proposed clear-cutting the forest in which the (mythical) Sasquatch lived, I have no doubt that thousands of people woud rush to that forest and chain themselves to trees, do whatever it took, to save them. And yet the great apes are being eliminated with nary a hand raised in protest. "Eating Apes" describes with shocking clarity the astonishing failure of the conservation community to mobilize the world to save our closest cousins. The message of the impassioned text, backed up by Karl Ammann's brutally riveting photographs, is: enough of the feel-good "win some small battles while losing the war (but publicize the hell out of the small wins)" mentality. Action is called for, and now. Anyone who has ever been enchanted by the grandeur of African wild places and the Bigfoots and Littlefoots who live in them should read this book now. Time is running out.
Amazing writing July 3, 2003
You will not be able to put this book down. The writing is genius, and the true story they have to tell will transform you.
Eating Kin June 20, 2003
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Eating Apes is well written in a comfortable style. This excellent and easy to read style is contrasted with the disturbing facts it presents of the ongoing genocides motivated by western civilizations penchant for greed and power. When you consider that indigenous human peoples of Africa have shared the forests with our fellow apes for thousands of years without destroying each other it is easy to determine who is responsible for this disaster. Consider the fact that our western civilization has yet to come across a people (ape or otherwise) who have lived in harmony with nature who we have not destroyed. This book chronicles the latest such destruction with regard to chimpanzees, gorillas and the human forest foragers as well as the forest in which they live. Peterson and Amman's book is a bold and brave j'accuse of the logging and conservation organizations who are spearheading this latest attack. You must read this book. And then you must follow the advice of Peterson and Amman as to what you can do to help stop it. Finally, you must act now, because there is very little time left for our kin in the forests.
Conservation's biggest failure exposed June 17, 2003
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Dale Peterson and Karl Ammann lay out the history of the commercial hunting of apes (and other species) that is driving chimps, gorillas, and bonobos rapidly towards extinction, and the direct link with the logging taking place within Central African forests. It's not surprising that logging companies don't give a hoot if our closest relatives are hunted to extinction, but what is shocking is Peterson's and Ammann's exposure of the inaction and lack of concern shown by major conservation groups, and the even more troubling partnerships between loggers and conservation groups that have enabled loggers to continue destroying the forests and the wildlife that live there. Anyone who cares about wildlife, great apes or otherwise, and donates to major conservation organizations must read this book before writing another check. Ammann, the photographer who has campaigned for nearly a decade to bring the bushmeat crisis to the world's attention, writes a compelling afterword, and provides disturbing photographs of murdered apes. My only complaints are that there were not more of Ammann's photographs included in the book, and that the indictments of major conservation groups were perhaps not scathing enough.
exposing Feel Good Conservation June 17, 2003
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
I am a biased reviewer, as I have for many years been debating folks on the CITES list and promoting Karl Ammann's articles on that and other lists. Still, I found their book very nuanced, polite and hard hitting. It covers all the angles dispassionately without singling out any one source for blame regarding the demise of Africa's biodiversity.The area that interests me in my own research is the problem of Feel Good Conservation, and the idea that you can just write a check to your favorite nature organization and all will be well. It is now well documented that a number of mainstream environmental organizations such as WWF are in bed with the industries they claim to be monitoring. The conflicts of interest go beyond absurdity, these guys (mainstream enviros) will be praising their own efforts and accepting donations (from whoever, the bushmeat hunter lobby group?) up until the last tree is cut from the Earth (ie., the Easter Island phenomenon). Other books that deal with this issue are Mark Dowie's classic, Losing Ground (1996) and a must read from Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The mask of pluralism (2003), which shows how almost all social and environmental movements (even so-called radicals) are controlled or manipulated to some extent from above by foundation money such as from the Ford Foundation (aka, CIA). Saving Africa's environment and wildlife will take more than writing checks to corrupt "nature" organizations who suck up donations from some of the worst environmental offenders in the world. These organizations offer a convenient cover for continued imperial plundering. More complicated rules and treaties are introduced through CITES (where in Central Africa it is ineffective because it's rules are inappropriate in a region where government barely exists) when what is really called for is simple steps toward local democracy in the world's environmental hotspot locations: Central Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia. But this cannot be since the United States backs bloody dictators and autocrats in these areas. Rule No. 1: The greed of the rich and powerful must be met at all costs. Rule No 2: Feel Good Conservation and other liberal gestures can be tolerated and even funded, as long as they don't infringe upon Rule No 1. There are worthwhile groups to support who have some of these issues sussed out...P>Thank you, Richard Wilcox, Tokyo
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