An amateur primatologist, Peterson embarked on a project with Jane Goodall which took him on a wide arc through East, West, and Central Africa to observe chimps and the eccentric individuals who study them. From crowded embassies to isolated research stations, on trains and riverboats with petulant Europeans one minute and marijuana-smoking pygmies the next, he conveys both the poignancy of life in the wild and the chaotic impact of modernity.