"[5] After the initial year-and-a-half field study in Africa, he would return every summer for another twenty-five years to observe the same group of baboons, from the late 70s to the early 90s.

Bob Nixon wrote in a review for the New York Times that "Sapolsky's earlier works, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers and The Trouble With Testosterone, established him as one of the finest natural history writers around.

He had a narrow head and long stringy hair that formed an elongated wing in the rear; he looked like a dissipated fin de siècle Viennese neurotic.'"

[1] Review by Publishers Weekly says that "Filled with cynicism and awe, passion and humor, this memoir is both an absorbing account of a young man's growing maturity and a tribute to the continent that, despite its troubles and extremes, held him in its thrall.

"[7] Kirkus reviews called the book "A wild and wondrous account, filled with passages so funny or so brilliant that the reader wants to grab someone by the arm and demand, “Hey, you just gotta listen to this.”"[8] Anna Moorhouse from the Journal of Young Investigators noted that "all of the primate characters described in this book are wonderfully well-drawn, and the reader at once falls in love with the baboons, just as Sapolsky did himself" and that Sapolsky wrote not only anecdotes about baboons but also dark sides of field research: "Underneath all the jokes, however, there is a darker undercurrent to the book that explores some of the more frustrating aspects of field biology and even some of the violent politics prevalent in East Africa at the time.