Frans de Waal (1948—2024), author of Mama's Last Hug, was C. H. Candler Professor Emeritus of Primate Behavior at Emory University and the former director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.
"Through colorful stories and riveting prose, de Waal firmly puts
to rest the stubborn notion that humans alone in the animal kingdom
experience a broad array of emotions....De Waal contributes
immensely to an ethical sea change for animals."
*Barbara J. King - NPR*
"De Waal’s eye-opening observations argue for better treatment and
greater appreciation of animals, even as he ensures that you’ll
never look at them—or yourself—the same way again."
*People*
"Game-changing....For too long, emotion has been cognitive
researchers’ third rail....But nothing could be more essential to
understanding how people and animals behave. By examining emotions
in both, this book puts these most vivid of mental experiences in
evolutionary context, revealing how their richness, power and
utility stretch across species and back into deep time....The book
succeeds most brilliantly in the stories de Waal relates."
*Sy Montgomery - The New York Times Book Review*
"An original thinker, [de Waal] seems to invite us to his front-row
seats, sharing the popcorn as he gets us up to speed on the plot of
how life works, through deeply affecting stories of primates and
other animals, all dramas with great lessons for our own
species."
*Vicki Constantine Croke - Boston Globe*
"De Waal’s conversational writing is at times moving, often funny
and almost always eye-opening....It’s hard to walk away from Mama’s
Last Hug without a deeper understanding of our fellow animals and
our own emotions."
*Erin Wayman - Science News*
"A captivating and big-hearted book, full of compassion and
brimming with insights about the lives of animals, including human
ones."
*Yuval Noah Harari, New York Times best-selling author of Sapiens:
A Brief History of Humankind*
"Before I realized Frans de Waal’s connection to Mama’s actual last
hug, I sent the online video link to a large group of scientists
saying, ‘I believe it is possible to view this interaction and be
changed forever.’ Likewise, I believe that anyone reading this book
will be changed forever. De Waal has spent so many decades watching
intently and thinking deeply that he sees a planet that is deeper
and more beautiful than almost anyone realizes. In these pages, you
can acquire and share his beautiful, shockingly insightful view of
life on Earth."
*Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and
Feel*
"I doubt that I've ever read a book as good as Mama's Last Hug,
because it presents in irrefutable scientific detail the very
important fact that animals do have these emotions as well as the
other mental features we once attributed only to people. Not only
is the book exceedingly important, it's also fun to read, a real
page-turner. I can't say enough good things about it except it's
utterly splendid."
*Elizabeth Marshall Thomas*
"Frans de Waal is one of the most influential primatologists to
ever walk the earth, changing the way we think of human nature by
exploring its continuity with other species. He does this again in
the wonderful Mama’s Last Hug, an examination of the continuum
between emotion in humans and other animals. This subject is rife
with groundless speculation, ideology, and badly misplaced folk
intuition, and de Waal ably navigates it with deep insight, showing
the ways in which our emotional lives are shared with other
primates. This is an important book, wise and accessible."
*Robert Sapolsky, author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our
Best and Worst*
"In Mama’s Last Hug, Frans de Waal marshals his wealth of knowledge
and experience, toggling expertly between rigorous science and
captivating anecdote to explain animal behavior—humans included.
While doing so, he rebukes the common conceit that we are
necessarily better, or smarter, than our closest relatives."
*Jonathan Balcombe, author of What a Fish Knows*
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