Reviews
"Jane Goodall’s research center on the shores of a Tanzanian lake pulsates with the passions, perils, and promises of the 1960s in Dale Peterson’s The Ghosts of Gombe."—Foreword
"It’s challenging to put together a complete picture so long after they happened, but Peterson uses letters, camp records, and personal accounts to tell the story artfully... Jane Goodall has spent a lifetime trying to understand the behaviors and relationships of the apes in Tanzania. With The Ghosts of Gombe, Dale Peterson has attempted to do the same for the people who made her research possible. It is the similarities between these two endeavors that make his book a worthwhile read."—Science
"An impressively informative and inherently fascinating read from cover to cover, "The Ghosts of Gombe: A True Story of Love and Death in an African Wilderness" is an extraordinary and unique study that is exceptionally well written, organized and presented... especially and unreservedly recommended for both community and academic library collections."—Midwest Review of Books
"Peterson’s engrossing, sometimes dizzyingly kaleidoscopic narrative is bookended by nuanced analyses of how Davis might have died, and the aftershocks that still rock those who knew her best."—Nature
"This brilliant narrative will haunt you. Dale Peterson has brought to life the Gombe of the late 1960's, describing the entwined lives of the chimpanzees and the people studying them. It's a true story of adventure, danger, and sudden death that makes compelling reading."—Jane Goodall, founder of the Gombe Stream Research Centre, author of The Chimpanzees of Gombe, In the Shadow of Man, and Reason for Hope
"Not only does Dale Peterson give us a vivid and insightful account of two years at the most scientifically pivotal field camp in history, but his masterful storytelling reveals both the humans and the chimpanzees at Gombe to be compelling and quirky characters. If you care about animals and the people who study them, you must read this book."—Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus and The Good Good Pig
"The Ghosts of Gombe is at once a gripping story, a riveting mystery, and a dramatic portrait of life at Jane Goodall's chimpanzee research camp in East Africa during the late 1960s. There is nothing like it anywhere."—Marc Bekoff, coauthor of The Animals' Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age
"The mysterious death of a young American woman propelled Peterson into this investigation of the making of one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements. His story of dedication, inspiration, and occasional naïvete and confusion among Jane Goodall’s research team of volunteers, students, and young scientists during the 1960s might sound like fiction, but The Ghosts of Gombe is as absorbing and authentic as it is original."—Richard Wrangham, author of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
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