Reason for Hope

I got almost to the end of this book and the last disc was badly scratched so I didn't hear the end, but I am not sure I could have taken much more. The beginning is very interesting, telling how Jane Goodall kind of fell into her career. And much of her life story is fascinating. But she hits a point where it all goes downhill, and she keeps on that downward slide, hammering in points about how awful humans are with a few exceptions and cataloging, in gruesome detail, the things that are done to animals. I don't really find fault with educating people about abuse to animals, but then she launches into everything that's wrong with the world. How did this book get the title Reason for Hope? Maybe in the last half hour or so on that last CD she gets around to it, but I had to keep turning my CD player off just to shake off the mood of doom and despair. Certainly she has lived through a lot, and has seen some ugly sides of human beings and even chimps, for that matter but it was relentless, and that's hard to listen to hour after hour, especially given that she reads the whole book in a kind of melancholy tone. I still admire her, but the book was very difficult.

My absolute favorite book of all time. Science, spirituality, poetry, humanity, animal behavior, motherhood, our past and our future all wrapped into one beautiful story. Jane Goodall went to the jungle at a time when it was unheard of for a woman to do so, she studied science with such a passion al......more

I love Jane Goodall, but this wasn't quite as powerful as I expected it to be. It was interesting reading about spiritual views from a scientist, and I loved her detailed descriptions of her time in Gombe with the chimpanzees. Goodall really has experienced a lot of sadness and horror in her life an......more

A very serious book covering very serious subject matter. I found this almost exhausting to read, especially the last third. I even took a highlighter out at one point so I wouldn't have to search some of the text for quotes. I believe most people my age are familiar with the work of Jane Goodall. I......more