What book not to bring to the African desert
In “Determine: A Science of Life Without Free Will,” the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky takes up a question that philosophers have asked for eons, and finds an answer in how our brains work. Sapolsky is the author of several best-selling books, including “Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst,” “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,” and “A Primate’s Memoir,” about his life in Africa studying baboons. He is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and lives in San Francisco.
BOOKS: What are you reading for pleasure?
SAPOLSKY: I just started a biography of Peter Kropotkin by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic. Kropotkin was a Russian prince who renounced his title, became an anarchist and wrote a textbook of evolutionary behavior about 80 years ahead of everyone else. I also just started this big and depressing dual biography of Hitler and Stalin by this British historian, Laurence Rees. I’m trying to figure out who’s more of a monster, Stalin or Lenin. I leapt into that after finishing his cheery book “The Holocaust: A New History.” He talked to survivors and perpetrators of the horrible atrocities committed during World War II. Except for a total sociopath here or there, most of the perpetrators seemed like slightly reasonable old men who’d done something unbelievably awful.
BOOKS: Do you read a lot about World War II?
SAPOLSKY: I jump around all over the place but earlier this year I read V. E. Tarrant’s “The Red Orchestra,” which is about Soviet spies in Nazi Germany. They all spoke a dozen languages and could take on personas, such a Belgian businessman, with about five-minutes warning. But in general, I’m not the reader I think I should be. I don’t read
‘I went through the obligatory science fiction nerd phase as a kid.’
fiction.
BOOKS: What kind of reader were you before you became a scientist?
SAPOLSKY: I went through the obligatory science fiction nerd phase as a kid. The book I’ve reread the most is William Pène du Bois’s “The Twenty-One Balloons.” That is about this utopian society on Krakatoa made up of wealthy people who are obsessed with hot-air balloons. That was my favorite book until I stumbled into Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.” I did read fiction stuff then, but since becoming Mr. Science Machine 101 fiction has gone by the wayside.
BOOKS: Were you a big reader as a kid?
SAPOLSKY: Reading was encouraged by my parents mostly because reading made you silent, so I was very bookish. We had a wonderful set of encyclopedias, “The Book of Knowledge,” but it was a 1914 edition. I was incredibly informed about what was going on in 1914, like about the propellers being built for this boat called the Titanic. That was just as well because I grew up in a houseful of people who were still pissed off about the czar.
BOOKS: Did any books set you on your path to baboon study?
SAPOLSKY: “The Year of the Gorilla” by George Schaller. He’s a god among field biologists because he was the first one to do field studies of gorillas. That started my primatology obsession. When Jane Goodall came along, her books had as much of an effect on me but gorillas remain my first non-human primate love. I’ve recently been reading a series of books about Dian Fossey, such as Farley Mowat’s “Woman in the Mists.” Fossey was the only person on earth who could have lived alone up in the rain forest with gorillas that long, but she was a very disturbed person. When I needed a break from Fossey, I started reading about Hitler and Stalin.
BOOKS: Would you take books with you to Africa when you did field work there?
SAPOLSKY: This was during my starving grad students days, there was one fabulous bookstore in Nairobi. I mostly bought books in terms of the most pages I could get for the least amount of shillings. That gave rise to the worst literary disaster of my life. I was going to Sudan for a few months. The most words for your money I found was “Joseph and His Brothers,” Thomas Mann’s retelling of the biblical story. So, I found myself in a desert for a couple of months, and whenever I was sick of camels, I could read hundreds and hundreds of pages about Joseph and his brother learning how to tie up saddles on camels.